Research Into A Music Video Of My Chosen Genre...

Plan B - Missing Links music video...

This is a very important video in relation to my work, for a number of reasons.

Firstly this video follows a similar narrative to what me and my partner had planned our video to have.

This music video follows the journey of a single character, using a variety of camera angles.

It uses restricted narration, as throughout the whole video, the audience only sees what Plan B (the artist) sees.

But, I plan for my music video to use omniscient narration, because my music video will have parallel action, showing more than one persons story within the situation.

Claude Levi-Strauss said that narratives consist of oppositions between "Right" and "Wrong".

I suppose this video does show "Good vs. Evil" in a number of ways, for example, when Plan B walks through the streets, the use of point-of-view camera shots show drug dealers and prostitutes which, represent the "Wrong side" within the narrative.

Plan B himself is actually represented as fairly neutral, yet I would say towards the end he is portrayed in a more negative tone, as his appearance and attitude visibly deteriorates.

To begin with, the video uses a couple of fairly long takes, lasting around three seconds each. Within the start of the video there are not that many cuts.

Then the tempo of the song increases, as well as the number of cuts.

The main character spends a lot of time staring directly at the audience, whilst walking towards them. This interesting camera angle makes Plan B appear in a sense quite threatening, which might have been the intention, in order to connote the violent themes being sung about in the song.

The genre of the video is very urban and could fall under the "Grime scene". It portrays violence as well as using references to drugs and prostitution.

The lighting throughout the whole video is quite shallow and low, there are only a few shots where sunlight is shown strongly.

Most of the time the streets are shown as shadowed and mysterious, this is even achieved when the streets are shown in daylight as well as night-time.

Characters within the footage are all wearing up-to-date clothing, emphasising the urban feel.

Within my music video, fashion will be incorporated thoughtfully, and the latest trends will be cleverly included.

Vladimir Propp's theory doesn't seem evident in this video in my opinion. This may be because the video doesn't stick to a solid narrative with an obvious middle and end.

This video simply follows a character walking through the streets from start to finish.

Furthermore, I wouldn't even say that Todorov's narrative theory is apparent either.

Todorov said that stories have 5 main stages, Equilibrium, Disequilibrium, Recognition, Reparation and a new Equilibrium.

Whereas, this video doesn't really consist of any significant events. Although you could say the story has a new Equilibrium because Plan B ends the video in an injured state, unlike the start of the video where he is healthy and unharmed.

There is no diagetic sound present within the video, the only thing that can be heard is the actual track being performed by Plan B himself. This could be a way in which the director wanted to advertise the artist, and ensure all attention is paid to him and his music.

I would say the video connotes a lot of themes, the most obvious being the negativity within some teenage lifestyles within society.

The video is illustrating, because the imagery on screen portrays the words being spoken by the artist, therefore I suppose you could class this video as very redundant.

There are very little entropic factors within this video, except for the way Plan B physically changes appearance in the time it takes him to walk from one destination to another.

He becomes inured, and looks weaker in a very short amount of time.

This is unrealistic obviously, yet it represents the issues within the song, which is why it would have been included.

Andrew Goodwin said that in music videos, there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. This is definitely evident within this particular music video.

The visuals within this video are illustrative of the lyrics. The whole video is based within an urban location, where drug deals and violence occurs, this is what the whole song talks about.

When Plan B sings "now the highlight of your day is masturbation" he uses an illustrative hand gesture, which proves there is obvious synchronisation between the audio and the visuals.

According to Goodwin, within music videos there is genre-related style and iconography present, this is true in terms of this video.

Goodwin also said that another key feature of music videos is there is multiple close-ups of the main artist. This is definitely true in this video, in fact almost the whole video is simply close-ups of the main artist!

The mise en scene of the whole video is dark and dangerous, this is very relevant when attention is paid to the lyrics being sung.

Dominant ideology of teenagers being trouble makers is being communicated, young people are being shown dealing drugs and up to no good. This sort of representation of teenagers probably has many opinions.

Someone with an oppositional reading would say that not all teenagers deal drugs and attack people!
Whereas someone with a preferred reading might actually be a teenager who at some point has dealt with drugs etc. and understands how easy it is to fall into the wrong path.

The way in which Plan B gradually transforms is technically very successful.
His transformation is smooth and unnoticeable, but when his appearance from both the start and end of the video are compared, significant changes have obviously occurred.