R+P Post 9: Music videos that have inspired and influenced my ideas

One of the music videos that really inspired our group was Miss Independent by Ne-Yo. It has the stylised lighting we are after and dance sequences similar to what we are thinking. Also the styling of Ne-Yo in the music, particularly the hat, influenced us as we wanted our artist to have an obvious distinguishing feature that could be seen not just in the music video but across all of the platforms - social media and website.

Case Study

We also looked at a range of other music videos for inspiration for a range of different elements.

Lighting

James Arthur - Can I Be Him and Gabrielle - Dreams

The lens flares with blue tint and the white flickers in the lighting are very effective and visually pleasing. We thought that making bold lighting choices such as this would not only comply with conventions but also keep the audience interested in watching the video and would ensure, so long as we pulled it off properly, that our video looked professional.

Dance Sequences

Ne-Yo - Closer 

Dance sequences like in Closer are an R&B music video convention and are very effective as not only can they reflect the emotion behind the lyrics but also they are aesthetically pleasing, especially with the different lighting, mix of group and solo shots and the camera movement and rapid angle changes they're typically accompanied by. Whilst this may be hard for us to pull off, getting a large enough group who can all dance may be hard, we can't ignore a genre convention like this and I think that with our lighting plans it could look very effective.

Narrative

Beyoncé - If I Were a Boy

Whilst we don't want to make a solely narrative video like If I Were a Boy, the structure and cohesion of it really influenced our ideas. We took from it that less is more and that we need to keep our narrative section simple so that the audience can understand. The theory of disjuncture comes in here, highlighting that we need to find the balance between that and ease of understanding. From this music video I also really liked how the cheating shots were done, with the phone call getting ignored and the symbolism in repeating a shot with both characters when the roles were reversed.