Wednesday, 7 October 2015

R&B Music Video Analysis




Beyoncé's pretty hurts video recreates a beauty pageant, in which we see female characters changing their appearance to win the completion. The video reflects the preparation girls have to go through before entering pageants. The first scene shows a series of shots of a group of female characters getting ready in a dress room. We can see the characters physically changing their look, putting themselves through pain and suffering through the way their physique and facial expressions are shown. An example of this would be when a female is shown in a backless dress, pinching the skin of her body, despite already being slim. This is an emphasis on stereotypes of girls in beauty pageants losing weight and willing to change their look to win.



The appearance of the women in the video contrasts in the beginning and towards the end. At the start we see the female characters getting ready, applying makeup and dresses. However towards the end these same characters are shown with their makeup on and dresses in elegant dresses. This conforms  to stereotypes of women becoming obsessed with their image, always wanting to impress male figures. As the only male character in the video is the judge, therefore the girls are trying to impress the man. The girls in the video all appear un-happy. This again is emphasising  the girls are putting on a show to impress the male character, using the false smiles, hair and make to do so.


 The music video shows the storyline of girls entering a beauty pageant, competing to become the winner. The narrative is shown clearly  as the story carries on in each shot. However cross cuts are used showing \Beyoncé standing in front of  a shelves of trophies. This reminds the audience they are watching a music video, switching  back to Beyoncé singing the song. When Beyoncé says “My aspiration is life. Is.. To be happy” The camera then cuts to Beyoncé destroying her trophies. This shows she is not happy in the pageants as she has to pretend to be something she's not. The narrative is shown clearly through out the video and is in chronological order apart from the use of cross cuts and cut away to Beyoncé singing the song. However Beyoncé sings the song during th narrative which doesn't conform to any typical conventions of a music video and allows the story line to take lead.

By analysing an R&B music video, it gives us an idea of specific ideas that can be included within our music video, if we were to choose this genre, with me analysing beyonce- a popular R&B artist, it can give me an insight into why her music videos are so popular, this will help me know what to inlcude to make our music video popular.

No comments:

Post a Comment