Research: Previous student video

Analysing previous student videos

In lesson, as a class we watched a variety of different student videos and had to analyse looking at many different aspects of the videos. Out of all the videos shown in the class I felt like this one was the best and even though it wasn't the genre I would usually listen to or be interested in I found this video to be very engaging and by far my favourite.

I was particularly draw to this video because of the themes within the video and the song. The video has an amplification narrative structure and so from the outset and throughout there are many links between the lyrics and what we, as the audience see. Immediately it is evident this is a video made by females (the "Female gaze") for a female audience; this is made obvious by the dove in the cage and the "Love" writing at the very beginning of the video. As well as this, the hands making the broken heart and the candles highlight this. I think it is very intelligent that the group introduced, in some sense, who the target audience was from the get go because throughout the video it  became much easier to identify aspects which reflected who the target audience was as it was already indicated from the start. These are not the only examples that emphasise the narrative structure. A few moments that I particularly thought were subtle links were firstly, the dancers as this genre is sort of dance music, dubstep and so the dancing (although at first appears to be irrelevant) is referencing that fact but also the lyrics mention a lot about relief and dancing is often seen as a form of relief. And secondly, the setting free of the dove at the end was like the artist setting free of what they were holding onto; I felt it was a beautiful image and praise this group for choosing appropriate material for this video. Another thing I thought was extremely clever was the stylized editing and the colour grading. The effect of this gives such a simple video a much more sophisticated and enticing look as well as this the grey,black and white colouring is very reflective of the mood of the song. Unsurprisingly I have no criticisms of this piece.