Our Literal Video Lyrics

Marlowe, Testcard and Roja album covers

Literal Videos

Some examples of Literal Videos



'Stans-Eminem' - Evaluation

The Evaluation of the music 'Stan' Eminem.

 

 

The music video follows a close narrative structure. It is all based around the star image, which is Eminem. 

The hero/villain image is not so clear in the sequence as we follow a variety of ideas to identify who we feel is a obvious villain or an obvious hero.

There are 3 different conflicts being shown in this sequence:

1. the conflict of the boyfriend character with himself,

2. the conflict of the boyfriend trying to write to Eminem, and

3. the conflict between the boyfriend and the girlfriend.

The music video portrays a very disturbed character who has a clear obsession with Eminem. We see him dye his hair; become aggressive when listening to his music , destroy things and hurt others etc. The narrative is about the character who idolises Eminem. We see a clear structured beginning, middle and end.

At the beginning we see the girlfriend who is played by Dido who is tossing and turning (she is also pregnant). We then see the boyfriend dying his hair blond which is creating the idea that he is copying the 'Eminem's look'. Throughout the narrative we see the frustration of the boyfriend writing to Eminem about his life, relating it to Eminem's like the fact he has a father/son bad relationship as well. He gets angry with the girlfriend repeatedly and treats her awfully by abusing her. There is a clear dramatic irony in that we, the audience, see that the letters the boyfriend is trying to get through to Eminem don't arrive to him because they either don't get sent out properly or Eminem himself is just too busy to read the letters. This results the boyfriend crashing the car with the pregnant girlfriend in the back and killing her.

The conflict is never resolved because it results in the boyfriend never getting an answer so he kills the girlfriend, and the letter Eminem finally writes to the boyfriend is written to late. We follow the boyfriend mainly throughout the sequence as the lyrics suggest what he is feeling. We are led to relate to this character because we see that he is extremely troubled, but there is slight sympathy for him. We see iconography being used in this by seeing the posters of Eminem all over the fan's basement walls. This actually shows that Eminem's production company/management and Eminem himself do not think highly of fan 'obsessing' over him as it can have disastrous consequences, like is shown in this video when the obsessed fan kills himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving off a bridge when Eminem does not reply soon enough to his message.

Iconography, sound, mise-en-scene and music are all so important throughout the video. Discussing imagery as iconography in this way implies a critical "reading" of imagery that often attempts to explore social and cultural values. Iconography is also used within film studies to describe the visual language of cinema, particularly within the field of genre criticism.

Iconography in this music video is used in resembling the obsession the character has for Eminem... we see him in his creepy den, which is covered in Eminem posters. The mise-en-scene helps set the mood in the video. It is very dark; this is reflected through the lighting, which in the house is dark, a sickly yellow colour, and lots of silhouettes of windows etc. They have also put in thunder and lightning and rain in the video. The music itself is key as the lyrics contrast the feelings of the characters; the sound creates an atmosphere and it also adds to the mood such as lightning- pathetic fallacy .

Compare and Contrasting Album Covers

Evaluation of 'Love is easy- McFly'

Evaluation of 'Love is Easy - McFly'

 

 



In this music video McFly are seen to be conveying the typical boy band' image and as a 17 year old girl, I can say that I really like this music video and I am a fan of McFly.

 

"Love Is Easy" is unlike other McFly singles as it heavily features the ukelele, being the first song that Tom Fletcher had written using it; Fletcher explains "[the band] wrote most of the melody first and that was just inspired because I bought a ukulele and that was the first song I wrote on it really".

 

According to Dougie Poynter, the song was partly inspired by the film Love Actually, saying "that moment in 'Love Actually' when one of the porn couple says 'all I want for Christmas is you', that moment there was our inspiration". The song also incorporates a quote from the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life.This is the first McFly single that hasn't been released as a CD single.

 

The music video appeals to young teenaged girls as their music is generally about 'love' and appeal to girls more than boys (which is their aim).

 

The video does not have a narrative story like 'Pretty Hurts'- Beyoncé, but it is comical and clever the way they have made it. This is quite rare for the singers to be playing instruments in their music video and McFly seem to break this barrier. McFly are seen to be playing instruments in this video and this creates a strong star image showing that they aren't just good at singing- they are also musically talented musicians as well.



Evaluation of 'Pretty Hurts - Beyoncé'

Evaluation of 'Pretty Hurts- Beyoncé'

The star image in this video is Beyoncé, which centres around the pressures on women to have outer beauty. The video shows the lengths that women have to go to in order to fit in and Beyoncé is dolled up as she takes part in a beauty pageant. The video is aimed at mainly older teenage girls from ages 14-18 years old.

The genre of this song is a cross between R&B, Pop and Soul. The music video is a narrative where Beyoncé is trying to create the message of that everyone is beautiful and it is hard for women especially is the world of beauty, its not easy. "Perfection is a disease of a nation".
During the music video, we hardly see Beyoncé lip singing, the music is recorded in a studio of her singing the song and then is put on top of the music video. There are a lot of juxtaposing shots of her in her bedroom on the floor showing the pain and suffering a beauty pageant goes through and then it cuts back to a shot of Beyoncé put on a 'face' and smiling in front of the cameras even though she isn't happy. This music video is most definitely a preferred reading as everything makes sense and I understand the narrative clearly throughout.

Even though this video conveys a message and Beyoncé says herself in an interview, 'It's really finding yourself that brings you happiness'.

Beyoncé is a self-described "modern-day feminist", Beyoncé's songs are often characterized by themes of love, relationships, and monogamy, as well as female sexuality and empowerment. On stage, her dynamic, highly choreographed performances have led to critics hailing her as one of the best entertainers in contemporary popular music.

This image is of Beyoncé when she was a little girl, when she used to dress up and make herself pretty for beauty pageants but now she feels they are not healthy, and the fun has been taken out of them and they are basically now revolving around competition, drugs, surgery, everything that is unnatural to make you 'beautiful' in the modern society.