Impression and Analysis of Music Videos

First Impressions and Analysis

Corinne Bailey Rae- Stop where you are

The immediate impression this music video gave to me was that it was both a sentimental and inspirational music video, both in musical composition and through visuals. It was a soft, slow and calming video for the most with the shots often comprising of very little in terms of complexity or mise en scene. Scenes were mainly empty, with little information in the shot or set. Different shades of greys comprised most of the bland setting which made the video itself rather dull. However, the video was still gripping as the camera mainly focused on the subjects rather than the setting. The singer herself wore a red dress, which contrasted from the background and grabbed our attention. A bright, saturated colour was used to obviously present the main subject as important and distinct, not only from the boring background but also in terms of the video which included more people. By setting up the scenery as so bland, these bright colours, which were also worn by other people, made them stand out to the audience who would have been more focused on them. This is very common within this type of inspirational pop music as the general audience want to feel a cathartic,emotional release and a feeling of sentiment, which this video does very well.

Radiohead- Burn the Witch

The main aspect that stood out from this music video was the presentation style; a stop motion cartoon animation. This heavily contrasts from the title ‘Burn the Witch’ which suggests violence and aggression while the animation is more skin to that of a children’s show. By using such a clear difference in presentation and expectation, the music video is able to successfully and effectively subvert the audiences prejudice. This subversion is effective in this case as it is then used to slowly build up the horror which occurs later in the video, which would shock the viewer and thus cause them, and me in this case, to remember the video.  Surprise and Comedy were the main things this video gave me the impression of and it’s differences made it a memorable video, which is one of the features of a good music video in my opinion.