Task 8: Review of previous students work

Florence and the machine:

In class today we watched a brilliant music video by poppy, a former student at Islington college and I think we were all really impressed by the amount of work that had gone into it, from the lighting to the camera shot it was all just so good that you would think that it was actually a real professional music video.

When we look at the theory of Andrew Goodwin we can see that they followed exactly what he was saying about when music videos don't follow the traditional structure which is normality, problem and resolution. I think that this music video really does follow the theory that Andrew came up with this means that this video is disjuncture meaning that none of the images really go with the lyrics.

When we look at what Carol Vernallis came up with when she stated that there is much more camera shots and editing in music videos than they use in the film industry and this is because there is more of an audience who watch music videos and that means that they need to be more exiting so that you will want to come back again and watch more music videos. But also the video is just a way of getting a face to the people, this is important because the fans need to feel connected and involved with the music and the artist so that they will want to go and buy there album. I think that the video that we looked at in class really made use of the camera and the editing tools because there were at least 200 shots in the video.

Laura Mulvey studied how women are represented in music videos and she found that in the majority of music videos out there women were nearly always dismembered to in a way that would benefit the men, for example there are always shots of the women's legs or her breasts. But in the music video we watched today in class there weren't really any shots where we were only seeing half of the women's body, and i think that is very clever to challenge the stereotypes and move away from the normality.

I think if I had one thing I would say to improve it then i would be to make sure that you frame all of your shots in the same way, because there were a number of shots where the performer was positioned in the middle and then in other shots she was positioned at the side with a load of space on the other side so i think you need to be consistent all the way through the video to make it more professional.