Case Study 1 'Hello Brooklyn'

Hello

Brooklyn

  I will be discussing the conventions of music videos today and how they communicate theories such as ‘Mathew Goodwin’s’ five elements to a music video theory, ‘Carol Versailles’s’ narrative link or disconnection theory… and I will be analysing how the video ‘Hello Brooklyn’ rapped by Jay z (who is signed by Roc-A-Fella), communicates this: through editing, imagery, mise en scene and visual identity.

 This video was created and visually designed by Greg Solenstorm who produced the animation, as well as well as the editing and SFX for this video; which follows more alternative conventions then your more main stream music videos; as this video contrasts some of ‘Andrew Goodwin’s’ theories as there is no performance or visual appearances or even close ups of the artist in the video, for audiences to connect with. No stereotypes of women being degraded (you can also contrast this to ‘Laura Mulvey’s’ male gaze theory). As well there are no intertextual references to other music videos, television or films, as the text provided is a more alternative and is an original take on music video producing.

 ...   This is where ‘Textual Schizophrenia’ comes into play, as this video does not follow your old conventions of the artist/artists; standing in front of the camera and singing directly to the audience. New conventions are being communicated, allowing the maker of the video to inject their own ideas, feelings and imagery to audiences. . . The maker of ‘Hello Brooklyn’ is ‘Andrew Goodwin’ who lives in Brooklyn and has a strong connection to its urban environment, so collecting imagery to visually communicate the lyrics was something personal to him. 

 The concept of this music video is to communicate Brooklyn, through the mise en scene. This has been accomplished through the use of bold imagery as well as the lyrics. To produce this video Andrew needed a variety of still images in order to form the montage effect he was going to achieve.  For this a lot of pre-planning is needed, although there is no moving camera work, a location sheet would still be a large contributor, in organising the varied imagery, needed to communicate Brooklyn. This is something I would need to bare in mind before I begin to film my own music

  

   The mise en scene in this music video represents a more: urban to lower class demographic of people; who will most likely connect to this video through an recognition of the imagery; as well as having patriotism in their psychographics in that their personal lives are an reflected in their relation to the images; which evoke feelings of conation in the area. This makes the video, niche in the demographic it is targeting, so does not have the bearing’s to have a large commercial distribution.

The use of technology has massively effected the advancements and scale of music videos today; and has allowed producers to become more creative in how they communicate media texts. For the Brooklyn video Andrew used Photoshop to manipulate his images by using the adjustments tools and levels, as well as the tones, to enhance the images. . .

  Once he had completed developing the images: he could use the ‘vanishing point’ tool in Photoshop, to distort his image into segments, and then bring into the main editing software Adobe After Effects: which is a moving imagine and video editing software, that allows you to create cinematic motion graphics and sophisticated visual effects.

  

 Andrew used this software throughout the whole editing processes, and it allowed him to achieve faultless continuity. This can be allied with some of ‘Carol Vernallises’ theories: one of which relates to how a music video is a ‘visual response to the lyrics’, and this is exactly the case in the ‘Hello Brooklyn’; which represents the music through a series of photographic responses to the city Brooklyn.

  ‘Carol Vernallises’ theory about editing in music videos, distinctly relates to the editing choices in ‘Hello Brooklyn’; for instance Vernallis makes known that a music is cut to the beat and edit matches the lyrics in the video, and in ‘Hello Brooklyn’ the lyrics are displayed visually and when the artist puts definition on a word when he raps, the edit reflects this by providing us with a harsh cut to the word,  by zooming in, this happens in various parts of the video as illustrated in 0.46 to 0.48 and 1.23 extra … This is something I want achieve in my own video by looking a tutorials and making sure I have a clear editing plan.

 The framing and movements in the music video ‘Hello Brooklyn’ have been skilfully constructed, to create a perception of a moving camera, however these are a series of images; which have had motion’s and angle movements emplaced during the editing process. Although there was no moving camera, originally used in the formation of this video; it still is in keeping with ‘Carol Vernallises’ theory on how the ‘camera moves in motion with the lyrics’. This is semblant throughout the music video ‘Hello Brooklyn’ as motion is emplaced onto the images to follow the typographic lyrics, which are continuously shown from start to finish. 

                              

                                                                                           

 The typography used, is also something which needed to be thought about logically, as the graphics and positioning of the typography; was key in creating a competent video. The type used was ‘Helvetica’ which is popular amongst designers as it is a clean legible font and is how the artists would want to be perceived: (little things like this are important in establishing a video.)

 There is no real diegesis presented in the music video ‘Hello Brooklyn’, and by no means; is the audience provided with a prominent storyline or character. So this is where the video differentiates from most of ‘Carol Vernallises’ theories on diegesis; however there is one point she makes that is in pertaining to the video: ‘Vernallis’ states that there is ‘repetition’ throughout a music video, that certain aspects of a video are re-shown in the edit. This is apparent in the music video ‘Hello Brooklyn’ as at the beginning of the video until 0.29 there is a close up shot of concrete, this is then repeated at the end of the video at 2:10 until 2:29.