q1

When I was creating the video, I researched the conventions from the genre of my own music video which was a slow power ballad. I decided to follow and develop the conventions this genre which I noticed had a mixture of narrative and performance. Throughout Christina Aguilera's song she combined narrative and performance together to show not only her emotion but what had happened to her. Therefore I have followed these conventions and interpreted them into my own video. I have ensured that narrative plays a big role in my video however performance is significant as it shows the audience what has taken place for this song and by doing this you can clearly tell that its a break-up story, full of heartbreak. As the video was a power ballad I wanted the audience to see raw emotion in the video to make it more effective. For example in my video there is a scene in which the couple argue and he pushes her. The mise-en-scene in this scene makes the song more dramatic. In this type of genre there are constant close-ups to show different emotions and to make the audience connect with singer. I have also integrated cinematography in these scenes such as close-ups and mid-shots. The close-ups are there to show how the girlfriend felt towards the situation or her boyfriend. Within these genres there are normally a direct link between the lyrics and the visuals, for example in Lady Gaga ‘Just Dance’ video she says ‘we’re all getting hosed tonight’ as she pours a bottle of champagne onto the floor, showing the audience that she wants to get drunk. I have also made a direct link between the lyrics and visuals by using the lyrics ‘looking down upon me’, have used a high angle shot on the girlfriend (myself) to show that she is inferior and vulnerable. Secondly I had to create a certain mood and understanding between the video and audience by using the mood and setting. I did this by converting clips into black and white to show that it was in the past or dreamy to show that is what she wants. At the end of the video the boyfriend dies and so for this part I converted the clip into slow motion because its very sad and has slow tempo. This is a contrast to the quick pace of editing in the argument scenes within the bridge of the song. We tried to include the video style and iconography often used in power ballad videos by Alicia keys using shots of a playing the piano. The singer is normally the character within the video and it is typical of this genre and we felt that we had to include this. We also thought about what types of costume would be suitable whilst she was playing the piano so we chose something that was glamorous such as a long black evening dress and diamond earrings.