DECONSTRUCTION OF A KEY TEXT FROM MY SUB GENRE:

Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You

I have discussed this video in a previous post on my blog but I really think it relates and is similar to the 
video I want to create. 

MISC EN SCENE
The LIGHTING in the video plays a enormous part. Looking closely you can see that when the video is more of a narrative and telling the story of the boy and girl falling in and out of love, it has the very naturalistic lighting with no special effects. However when the performance aspect comes through through the video it has a lot more CHIAROSCURO LIGHTING which gives the video a much more dramatic, staged feeling. Juxtaposing the natural effect the narrative parts give off. 
BODY SHAPE AND LANGUAGE usually plays a big part in music videos that focus on female gaze. However this video just has natural body shape and pretty PG language not saying or showing anything you wouldn't want your children to see. In the narrative part of the music video again, all the props used are naturalistic, not expensive or classic hollywood things but very average everyday objects. However on the performance part of the video there are almost no props used other that the musical instruments and equipment. This is to determines how unnatural this scene is and completely separates it from the narrative story. This theme then runs through hair and make up, costume and facial features and expressions, colour and location. 


EDITING
Watching this music video allowed me to see a lot more editing techniques that I hadn't noticed before. There is an EYELINE MATCH right near the beginning of the video when the camera zooms in on the keys. This doesn't really have a big impact or significance to the movie but it does have a direct correspondence to what the song is about. It also has a lot of GRAPHIC MATCHES. Again these are used at the beginning of the video, first when she is on the swing and changes to the actress acting the younger version of the artist and then when the small boy and girl are sat on the bench and it changes to them on the sofa. This has either been done to show how long they've known each other and have always had this relationship because they will always loved each other. Or how repetitive love is and everyone feels the same way no matter what age they are.
CROSS CUTTING is used throughout this music video between the performance and the narrative of the video. This is done to show that although they are very different in what they are showing, they relate and are about the same thing. It keeps them linked as well, so neither seems out of place or unimportant. 
Towards the start of the video when they begin the jokey fighting and throughout when they are arguing, it uses JUMP CUTS. For example it shows them just bickering and then it switches, within the same scene, to when she is chucking his clothes out the video, or when she puts the keys down the toilet. Its like it goes from something not that crazy or dramatic to something really over the top and extreme. 
Due to the fact that this is a music video and unless the music video is one continuous take with loads of things involved, which some concept videos do, they often tend to have really short shots. This is called a SHORT TAKE. Although some films include this to speed up pace, I think the main reason music videos use them is similar to this; to maintain and show the pace/beat of the song. The hole point of a music video is to show off and make the song more popular and memorable. By making even the shot length link to the song, it makes it all about the song even more so. 


SOUND
The only sound this music video contains is the music from the song it is promoting. It does include LIP SYNCING. This means that the filming of the artist and the music that has been put over it has been synchronised to make it appear the artist is singing live in the video. However they were most probably miming to a song that was playing in the background of filming. This effect is done in a huge majority of music videos. It determines a piece of filming as a music video instead of a short film and is probably the most common convention of a music video. 
Although this music video doesn't include any DIALOGUE you can hear it does show people speaking in more than one incident, although it has been muted. 
It contains a lot of SYNCHRONOUS SOUND as well. Although at many points the music is reflected, if loosely at times, it is related in some way or another. 
One big issue we face when deconstructing the use of sound of music videos is the debate on what is DIEGETIC SOUND and what is NON-DIEGETIC SOUND. Is the music which has been put on over the top but also has parts in the video where the talent is miming along to it diegetic or not? IT has been added after, but surely when they were filming and it looks like the artist could here the music and would have to to mime along to it?