Q1.b. Media Language

In my music video, Buried Alive, we used media language to create meaning for the audience. We created a music video to the song ‘Buried Alive’ which tied into our cross promotional package also including a digipak and website as well as the music video in order to promote our new artist. Ever since the early days of rap the media has negatively represented the music genre through stereotyping and over exaggeration.

 The editing in our music video was deliberately constructed to create meaning for the audience. We used a number of fast cuts and transitions to create pace. In the first refrain, we included 20 cuts in a 10 second period, which jumped through 4 locations. We did this to create a number of effects for the audience. The fast transitions symbolised the pressure the character in the video is under – iSO sang about his life spinning out of control which helps to create disorientation along with the purposely blurry shots we put filters over where the main character is walking through the graveyard. The editing follows the pace of the song in order to make sense to the audience so as the song starts slow, so does the pace of the transitions and shots, therefore as the song speeds up in the chorus, so does the speed of the editing. The fast chorus with the though beats in place enhance audience engagement. However, there is a dramatic pace change within the song where the main character raps at a particularly faster pace than normal. In order to keep up with this pace we put 37 shots in a 25 second time frame so the transitions were quick which conveyed pressure and confusion to the audience.

We used all the different aspects of sound to our advantage throughout our music video in order to enhance it and keep it interesting for the audience. Firstly we used the soundtracks rhythm and beat in order to cut the shots in terms of editing so that it looked smooth and fit to the song. We did this by listening carefully to each beat and fit each shot in time. We also used Andrew Goodwin’s theory whereby we used thought beats throughout our music video to create realism by making it easy for the audience to see the sound, including the relationship between the music and the visuals which illustrate the music. We contradict Andrew Goodwin’s theory whereby he states that music videos tend to ignore narrative as they’re potentially advertisements as we did have a linear narrative within our music video as we felt it was appropriate and would help to explain the context. We also chose to use some diegetic sound within our music video as it would help to bring a sense of realism and reality into the video which fit with the narrative and locations of the shots, as well as helping the narrative to flow. The church location and church bells helped with our videos concept as it was for the main character to discover his own soul and the use of interruption with the diegetic sound bought him back to reality and the location helped to amplify this as he was surrounded by the thought of death.

Using Mise En Scene within our music video enabled us to project the ideas behind our narrative and concept. Throughout our music video we used a variety of locations which is common within the rap genre as the shots are all fast paced and they all jump from location to location. The Graveyard location is the most iconic location in our music video as it enhances the narrative and helps the audience to understand the visuals which supports Goodwin’s narrative concept. Stuart Hall’s theory was important for us as we chose to create a preferred reading for the audience which we wanted them to encode. We used high and low key lighting throughout to contrast the good vs evil as our artist searches for his soul. The settings we used were mostly urban as this was typical to a rap music video, especially having several different urban locations too. Our representation of our rap music video was to aim it at young teens to appeal to their idea of reality for a Chav.