Interpretation of Genre Through Editing

This still was taken to illustrate the performance genre. In music videos where performance is the dominant genre we usually see close-ups of the artists’ performance, either by singing or playing their instruments (which is the case in this still). In many performance videos the image is de-saturated for various reasons; for example, in music videos for acoustic or slow paced songs, the de-saturation creates a certain tone and mood which complements the relaxed or slow lyrics. An editor may choose to de-saturate an image to focus on what is happening (the artist’s performance) rather than focusing on aesthetics using bright colours and multiple mise-en-scene. Editors may want to create motifs and adapt a certain style to their videos, for example, the editor might de-saturate a shot where the artist is playing a piano to recreate the black and white colours of the piano across the whole scene, creating a colour scheme.

Gabrielle Aplin’s music video for her song The Power of Love is a great example of this. It is clearly a performance genre of music video as it shows her performing and singing throughout. Also the type of shot is very similar to my own still; the close up (or medium close up in this case) of her playing the piano focuses the audience on her performance. As well as similar shot type, in Gabrielle Aplin’s music video the colour of the image has been edited. The outcome is very similar to mine; it implements the slow pace of the song and lyrics and creates a mood of stillness and calmness. The two images are not identical in a sense that mine is a more extreme close up and is more de-saturated. However, they are both very similarly to achieve the same final effect. 

This still was taken to illustrate the image genre. In image genre music video the way the artist is portrayed is the main focus of the video. Nearly all the time, the artist will be made to look attractive and desirable, or the way the shots are done will focus the audience on physical appearance and visual cues. A lot of attention is given to mise en scene in music videos; a colour scheme or visual motifs are adopted in the videos and the mise en scene usually links closely to the lyrics of the song. Body language and the way the artist carries him or herself in the video is also a major point, this is because the body language will show the audience what the artist is like. Therefore the better the artist carries him or herself the better the audience will see them. In my still I tried to recreate this style, I adopted a blue colour scheme to bring it all together and add visual appeal. The artist is clearly the focus in this still as the shot only shows her and nothing else. Her body language makes her look confident and happy; she is smiling and holding an upright posture. She is also holding her hair which draws attention to her physical features. I chose edit this still using text. Text is often used in image music videos to show and promote to the audience the artist, song, or album. The text is usually in the same colour scheme or visual motifs as the rest of the video. I recreated this by choosing a blue and teal text.

Katy Perry’s ‘One of the Boys’ is a great example of this. Katy Perry is a Pop music singer and image is a popular choice for music videos of this genre. In the still we see she is obviously the centre of focus; she is wearing bright coloured clothing which draws attention to her and the colours around her are faded to focus the audience on her. Her posture and pose are a deliberate way to make her seem more attractive and desirable, this is done to promote the artist and make them more appealing to the audience. Her audience is mainly female so perhaps the choice of sensual pose is to attract a male audience also. Similar to my own edited still, in this example the artist has also adopted a visual style (a summer theme), and within that visual style we notice a colour scheme of blues and reds which match the title meant to promote  the song and the artist.

This still is used to illustrate the narrative genre of music video. In narrative music videos, a story that is closely related to the lyrics is told through the visuals in the video. Most of the time, the narrative includes more than one character, and usually one or more of the characters are the artists. There are numerous ways in which the characters can interact with each other in narrative music videos; the one I chose to recreate was telephone conversations. For telephone conversation shots in videos, a split screen edit is a very good choice because it shows both characters involved in the conversation at the same time. In my edit, I made the same character face herself using a split screen to create the effect that she is conversing with herself through the phone. It is very important to make narrative music videos interesting so that the audience can pay attention to the whole story, so using a type of edit that engages the audience is important. 

A great example of how this type of editing has been used before in music videos is found in ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ by Cyndi Lauper. Although the method of split screening is different (in Lauper’s video the second screen is a small bubble within the bigger screen, whereas, my edit is split exactly in the middle making both screens like mirror images), the concept of splitting the screens so that the two characters having a telephone conversation can be seen is done in both stills. For an old music video like this, this kind of edit would have been quite modern and innovative; meaning the audience will find the video more interesting and will be more engaged when watching the music video, which is definitely a positive as it promotes the song.