Representation of women in Music Videos

Lily Allen - Hard out here

This controversial music video takes a swipe at Miley cyrus- giving the message across that the only way women can get credibilty and attention nowadays is by taking their clothes off.

She also takes makes  a references to Robin Thicke by having the same silver balloons he had in his music video. This conveys the message of how women are objectified and seen as sex objects by men.

She also takes a swipe at the rapid sexism that can make working in the music industry really frustrating, unfair and hard for women, as if this kind of message is being portrayed in the music industry target to young children, it is going to spread into the minds of the public that women are the inferior gender.

The video quickly racked up over 1million views and started a controversy similar to the ones it criticises 

The video starts with her on a hospital bed receiving lip suction at the encouragement of her sleazy manager. This addresses the topic that a lot of women are being penalised for not having "the perfect body." It is really graphic, disgusting and hard to watch but it only makes the message stronger.

The opening scene of Lily's video for new single Hard Out Here shows the singer on an operating table as a music industry type asks: “How does a woman let herself get like this,” referring to her body shape.

Lily replies: “I've had two children,” before she hops off the table and starts singing with her twerking dancers.

Obviously Lily has actually had two children, which is the reason she's been semi-retired from the music industry for a while, but she drew from her own life for the video in more ways than one.

She's just revealed that she considered having plastic surgery after the birth of her first daughter in 2011 and actually visited a surgeon who told her she needed to reshape her thighs, bum, knees, back and stomach, which we assume would have been as horrendously painful and unnecessary as it sounds.

Thankfully she got pregnant again and that put paid to her mission of perfection but she told the Observer Magazine: “Nobody's immune to the pressure to look thin.”

Lily says she intended the song, which features scantily dressed dancers whose bums she smacks, to be a dig at the industry's expectations of women to be sexually desirable objects and physically perfect in other vids from the likes of Robin Thicke with his Blurred Lines track.  But she's been attacked for using mainly black dancers in the video.


Some critics such as The Daily Mirror have taken notice that most of her back up twerking dancers are black and called her a racist. the Daily mail are well known to be very misogynistic, they often highlight mistake and flaw a woman has. There was a similar case with 'Amanda palmer'- Daily mail had never acknowledged her or made any comment to her music; but suddenly when Amanda had the incident of her breast being on show- The daily mail wrote a whole front page article on it , which shows how misogynistic it is. However Amanda decide to fight back by writing and performing and writing a song challenging Daily Mail.

In addition, Lily replied on twitter that the dancers were chosen for their ability alone, regardless of their race. She said "If I could dance like the ladies can, it would be my arse on your screen"

Case study 3 - Alex Southam

 Alex Southam was trained as a lawyer and studied law at University. He found it dull and boring and decided to start again and begin a career in music video production. His initial idea was to start making music videos to learn the trade in order to transfer to film production. Has worked for Agile Films who describe him on their website as ‘An exciting new talent, working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation. Entirely self-taught, his inventiveness and creativity have caught the eye with a series of diverse promos for the likes of the Walkmen, Alt+J and Lianne La Havas. Alex joined Agile in August 2012.’

To start with, Alex took on all aspects of music video production including the camera, lighting, editing and everything else all by himself. He now uses a director of Photography.  Alex likes the format of music videos. He feels there is real freedom and you can do anything you want. He is less keen of shooting commercials because he feels there is far less creative freedom and no room for personal expression. He uses Vimeo to showcase his projects and videos. Vimeo is seen as more respectable than Youtube and this is an important point that he makes a point of using Vimeo instead of Youtube.

 Alex made his impact with the video for "Tesselate" by Alt J which took only one day to shoot and cost £10,000. He used many special effects which attracted much attention.

Chase and status "Lost and found" has a £50,000 budget, it was filmed in LA.
It was filmed at 36 frames a second and then played slowly for a distinctive effect which gave it the 1990's VHS look and there was only three edits in the entire video

Case study 2 - Emil Nava

 Emil Nava is a director that started out as a runner for film production companies. He worked for blink productions and now freelances for OB management. After working as a runner graduated to Assistant Director (A.D.) where he would manage the video shoots. He signed to Academy, who are the biggest music video production company, until he left and worked for "between the eyes". He now works mainly for pulse productions.

Emil has begun directing adverts because they generally have higher budgets and production values. He prefers music videos because they have far more creative freedom than commercial advertisements.

At his busiest, Emil was responsible for making 24 music videos in one year. When he started out his production budget was as low as £5000-£10,000 but now can be as high as £160,000 in the case of Jessie J's videos.

Artists whom he has worked for:
1) kid british

2) Paloma faith- picking up the pieces

client- sony

cost £80,000

3) Ed Sheeran- Lego house

Client- Atlantic

4) Jessie J - Do it like a dude

   Client - Island

Cost - £25,000

5) Rita Ora - R.I.P

    Client - RocNation

Emil’s Top Tip

Use Extreme Close Up on faces wherever possible

Do not shoot whole of video in medium shot/long shot

Example – Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares to U

Godley & Crème - Cry

Case study 1 : Jamie Thraves

Jamie Thraves is a director of music videos. He began by making short films at Hull university, where he studied illustration . He used his fims, such as “calling card” which won awards to get his "foot in the door" with the video production company "Factory films"- in other words the production company noticed him when her directed this film which made a opened a lot of opportunities for him.  At the beginning of his career, the first videos that he directed for artists were very low budget; costing around £5000 each.

Like Jaime Thraves,  upcoming directors normally go through this process; a  ‘Commissioner’ from a record label sends a track to 5-10 directors, the directors then each submit a treatment. This stage is unpaid, the director who has submitted the ‘best’ treatment is then commissioned to make the video -Only then is the director paid. This shows how steep and unreliable being a start up director could be

.
 Jamie Thraves is best known for his two most successful videos which are:

Radiohead "Just"
which had £100, 000 budget and was Shot in 3 days

Coldplay "The scientist"
which had a bigger budget of £200, 000 budget and was also shot in 3 days

His most recent video was was japanese popstars "song for lisa". Currently music videos cost about £20, 000. It took Jamie two days to shoot and he used these music videos to get him into the film business. So far, he has shot three features: "The low down", "The cry of the owl", "Treacle Jr".

Another one of his recent music videos that he directed was Tome Odell- Another love

Jamie’s tips: use the lyrics but try not to be too literal and Most importantly-go with the emotions of the lyrics

Lip syching Exercise Evaluation

In lesson, we were set a group task to film and edit ourselves lip synching the song ‘Don’t go breaking my heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee. One of the things I learned during the making of this was how to film a music video effectively. For example, initially I would have filmed the music video by sections- which would have meant that I would have a lot of short and not very detailed shots which would have been very difficult to use in the editing process. However, through this task I have learnt that lip synching the song all the way through in one shot provides better variety of shots to be chosen and also made the editing process much easier. In addition, I also learned that it is very important for the artist mouth the words very clearly in order for the song to match up with the lip synching very easily. When it comes to filming duets i have learned that timing is key in the case of Lip synching, as the mouthing of the lyrics as to match the actual songs- in order to get the right person singing at the right time. To make this successful, we had the music playing out loud whilst the artists were lip synching. 

We used the programme- Final Cut Express for our editing process. We then synchronised our footage with the song which had imported by putting the footage in the appropriate time frame. Furthermore, we then selected the shots we wanted for each section of the video from the different shot types that were already synchronised-this way is a lot easier to put together.

I have realised a few mistake in this preliminary task that could be avoided next time. One of the mistakes was; some of our lip synching wasn’t much synchronised with song. To avoid this in the future- I would have the artist make the mouthing of the lyrics really emphasised and clear. Another one of our mistake was the lighting in our shots; some of our shots were really dark because of us having our backs to the window on a summary day-therefore creating a dark silhouette. To prevent this, I would have the artists located somewhere right away from a window and well lit, in order to prevent deep shadows. This preliminary take was very helpful to us towards our real music video, as it made us aware of what to include and what to prevent and it was a huge learning curve on lip synching and synchronisation in the editing process.

Brain storm of my A2 music video-Amber Rubarth -Rough Cut

Arafat Olayo's music video Animatic

Racism in Pop videos

It is now thought that music videos are not simply throwing more flesh at us but loads of layered messages. Chief among these are narratives around race, which go largely unmarked by mainstream media.



There's a huge debate going on about "sexualization", but it is narrowly focused on explicit portrayals of sexuality in videos aimed at young people.

But what bout race in this video? when do we look at who is centre stage? And sexualization is mainly hip hop?

                          

Miley cyrus used to be a sweet girl, now she has restyled a a caricature of "black culture" (and surrounded herself with some faceless black women dancers for extra cred)

                                                                    

The uses of Pop Videos- Branding (Katy Perry)

How Pop Videos are used to reinforce Katy Perry's brand and reflect her private life

Katy's music videos often has a narrative- a plot that ties both the song and the video together.

In her music video 'Firework' we see Katy in a more grown up point of view as the video was quite sensible inspiring. We see her as the ideal older sister as the song has a positive message which is to always be confident in any circumstance. The respective audience for this would be younger teenage girls as they would look up to Katy as a role model.

In her music video 'Last Friday night (TGIF)', the scene was vividly girly and feminine.It showed a stereotypical shy geeky girl transforming into a pretty girl that all the guys want. This would appeal to the respective audience of teenage girls as they are more likely to be able to relate to it as most of them are going that stage themselves.

Katy then released a music video called 'Cali Girls' whilst she was in a relationship with Russel Brand. Although this music video has a childish feel to it, it has more deliberate sexual references, which is a very different image to her last music videos which have been very inspiring to young teenage girls. This could have been caused by her relationship with Russel Brand, as she is growing up and exploring the the music industry, she might have been influence by her adult life.

Katy's relationship with Russel Brand then ended abruptly, leaving Katy heartbroken, she then released a music video called 'Wide Awake'. At the start of this video, she takes her wig off which could symbolise her wiping a new slate and starting fresh- she is taking her mask off- she is dont pretending to be happy. In this music video she wears a black dress which could represent mourning and grief from her failed relationship with Russel Brand. She the the takes a bite from an old rotten strawberry, this makes a reference to the story of Adam and Eve- which could symbolize her admitting that she has done something wrong and is apologizing. The lyrics says "i am born again" which conveys that she want to go back to her positive image. This is shown by her clothing- she wore a sexy but not too revealing nude dress to show her new self.  We are then introduced to little Katy who represent her getting  back in touch with her childhood.Then there were two identical monsters that had physiques of men, this portrays that all men are beasts and all the same. We then go into this very colorful scene with a prince charming awaiting her but he was only deceiving her, this could symbolise how she was deceived by Russel Brand. Then the little girl handed her a butterfly, which portrays her getting her freedom back, this also portrays her as being a fairy tale figure.

Katy Perry's 'Roar' symbolises the superiority of women and how they don't need men in their lives to succeed. This was shown by her clothing - when she was with the man, her outfit wasn't very revealing, it was very smart.This was also shown by how she adapts in the wild all alone, however, it still had a feminine touch as she was then shown, painting the elephant's toes and having the necklace around the tiger's neck that said 'Kitty Perry'. As the music video resembled that of a children's story book, she is gaining back her 'Older sister' image.

Lip Synching Exercise "Don't go breaking my heart"