Research; Music video analysis

This is my third and final music video analysis (until of course I analyse past students work!) so I've chosen to analyse a song chosen by one of the males that filled in my questonnaire, by doing this I can look into a song that my target audience found memorable and perhaps take some hints.

Here it is; King Charles - Mississippi Isabel;




I'm going to focus mainly on some of Goodwins theories, the ones which apply to this video - which is actually most! Then I'll briefly touch on other aspects of the video.

Links between lyrics and visuals:

There are numerous links between the lyrics of the song and whats going on in the shot during this song, therefore making the music video a narrative, although it's not an obviously played out story if you were to watch the video without the music I feel you would still be able to follow the story.

This shot is seen at the lyrics 'I rode around on my bicycle'

And this shot is over the lyrics 'she grows wild strawberries'

Links between music and visuals:

Again this happens throughout the video, but in quite an interesting way in my opinion; when the lead singer is lip syncing to the song there are certain times when he does gestures that relate to the beats of the song, for example he raises and drops his hands in time with a loud drum beat, or he mimes playing the piano along with the piano melody. This actually has a really interesting effect and I would perhaps like to add this aspect into our music video as it highlights a certain beat to the audience!

Demands of record label/close ups of artist:

There are many shots of the artist 'King Charles' in the video, and once again it's done in an interesting way; he is not only singing along to the song at certain points, but he's also the character in the narrative part of the story which is interesting and isn't seen a lot in music videos. This enables the record label to not only make sure the audience know exactly what he looks like and so can relate and become a fan of him and his music; but they can also build up a persona via the narrative aspect of the music video. For example he comes across as a sweet man as he's singing about riding to see a woman, taking her for lunch and kissing her which we see happen in the video, however he also seems vulnerable as the song and video say and show that she 'kissed  him once, he took her out for lunch and she never kissed him again'. Therefore making the audience see him as a sweet but modest, vulnerable man.

Genre characteristics:

King Charles is not really a specific genre, it crosses between folk, pop and rock. However the location and entire mood of the music video seem to fit in will with the song and the genre of the song - it creates a style for King Charles which he definitely follows as the rest of his videos are similar in the sense of characters, styles and following Goodwins theories!

Editing:

The editing of the song again fits in with the song, there are a range of shot lengths, from short to quite long and I think the editing works really well as the shots are the right length to tell the story for the audience to understand. I hope this works with our music video as a lot of our shots are quite short so hopefully the theme and narrative still comes across to the audience.

Lighting:

I thought lighting was a good thing to look at in this music video due to the fact I think the lighting is all completely natural, which will be the same as our video - as our location is outside so it's difficult to create any false lighting!

I can completely understand why this video is so memorable - it's really interesting and unique!