1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.
(e.g. stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop).
The genre that I have been allocated is pop, however I would lean more towards alternative hip hop. The associations of this type of genre I would say are artists being appealingly presented to their young audiences, for example looking at the artist in the chosen music video, he is targeting both sexes; girls appeal to his looks whereas boys are encouraged to follow his style.
Because its alternative hip hip, it meets its expectations because there is often dancing featured within music videos due to the style of the tune that has been composed for the purpose of uplifting the atmosphere and getting people to dance. This need is further encouraged through the dancers in the background, as well as the artist himself, who is the bright focal point in the video almost mimicking Elvis Presley's iconic dance moves.
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images.
(either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
The music video contains a dark room of large mirrors, dressed in black dancers, and Willy Moon in his light blue suit to contrast against it all. The artist is mostly singing about his style, like he'd be impressing for the ladies, and with this effect he encourages boys to want to be like him.
Tryin' to doubt my style?
Hey, hey hey yeah how you like me now?
With these sort of lyrics, he is asking the audience if they're against his style, however he is stood above all the dancers and at times the camera is looking up at him, which forces the audience to feel weaker against his power, even if the audience do dismiss his style.
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music.
(either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)
The music video falls into the pop genre, and expectantly it would include figures dancing to the music. Looking at this video, they do just that. Their dancing has been choreographed to be appropriate to the rhythm of the music, which gives the music video nice visuals. The artist is also dancing, although using his own movements, he is also hitting the right rhythm to the song, which makes the audience want to dance to the song as they watch the dancers in the video.
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
As I stated before, the artist gets more close-ups in comparison to the dancers. This is mainly due to the fact that he is more important as he is the focus of the song. Additionally, there are too many dancers to focus on individually, and since they're all dressed in the same dress code dancing same moves, it would make no difference, unless that single dancer held a meaning to the music video. However, they perform together, which is why there are more establishing shots and mid shots of the dancers to show their routine and the pleasing effect they create when moving together.
The artist is being aimed towards teenagers, which makes it important for him to have close-ups and more screening with him in it rather than the dancers to impress the audience with his style of clothing and dance moves.
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
In this music video, there are a lot of dancers moving around the single artist, which naturally makes it difficult to track both. With the use of mirrors, even though the camera is facing the dancers that are lower to the artist, the mirrors are still able to show his back in reflections even though the camera isn't videoing him. Due to his clothing, he stands out from the dark colours surrounding him, which makes it even easier to identify when reflected. It forces the audience to look at the light-coloured figure dancing amongst the black-dressed dancers.
6. There are often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc.).
I can't think of anything other than the artist mimicking Elvis Presley's dance moves. Because of his mise-en-scene, it fits in well.
