2. Research/ case studies

Jhene Aiko - Comfort Inn Ending (Freestyle)

The summary of the video is really similar to our idea for our music video. It is about a guy cheating his girlfriend and it basically shows the audience how angry the girl gets and how she almost tries to take revenge (she doesn't go overboard when she's taking revenge). Throughout the whole video, the effect they use is slow motion and I really like this idea as it is not something we usually would see in music videos and its also the best way to emphasizes sadness. I think it contrasts how unexpected the whole situation was for the girl overall. She cries and feels really heartbroken. Her and her friend scratch the guys car whilst another girl is inside the vehicle, which portrays her anger. It was also obvious that the guy really cared about his car because when the flashbacks were seen, his car keys were always visible to emphasize its importance to him, so she deliberately did this to take revenge. She takes all of his belongings outside and burns them, almost as if she wants to burn the pain and every memory away or that it showed how much her heart burned because of him. I thought this was effective because usually people would just throw the clothes away but she destroyed them and she destroyed her feelings with it.

This music video is narrative based because it tells the story of how the girl dealt with a really heartbreaking situation. Like I mentioned before, she has flashbacks of the good memories she had with her boyfriend, she shows us how she feels through the use of her crying about the situation. She deals with the problem by burning the guys clothes and by scratching his car. There were moments of when she and her friend were shouting at the girl he cheated on her with. The video tells us the story of her reaction and her feelings towards everything that happened.

Throughout the video, she was in role, being the character she was in her song. There were absolutely no lip syncs in the video but there was a lot of dialogue between the characters, however the track was playing over it. For example, whilst the girl was scratching the guys car, the girl in the vehicle was shouting at her and the other friend helping the other girl was shouting things back but we didn't hear any dialogue as the music was being played.

There were a variety of camera angles/ shots used such as extreme close ups of her face when she was crying, close ups in the flashbacks (this could symbolize the contrast between her emotions and feelings) mid shots from the flashback scenes, and the scenes where she is burning the clothes, wide shots of her scratching the guys car. These are all used for different purposes to either show the emotion, the importance or the detail of each scene. Special effects were only used in the last scene where she was staring at the burning clothes, the screen started to fade/ black out just like her feelings towards this person. Furthermore, the whole video was edited in cutaway techniques, possibly to illustrate how fast things happened which contrasts the actual effect of the whole video (slow motion).

The target audience is clearly for people who have been in a relationship but have been cheated on, possibly teenagers and over. As it is a relatable subject for many people, it would attract them into buying this record, which is also how she would connect to her audience as they understand what it feels like to be heartbroken.

I really love the idea of the whole video being in slow motion, we would definitely use this as an effect in our video. I think the slow motion effect would describe/ help people understand the situation really well. 

Keyshia Cole - Trust And Believe

This video is both narrative and performance based as it has flashbacks, present day  and lip sync scenes of her heartbreak story. The video starts off with the present day, right after when she finds out that she is being cheated on by her boyfriend with her best friend. She is behind a door and her boyfriend is yelling for her to come out from the other side of the door. Suddenly the video goes into fast paced cutaway between two scenes of her singing/ lip syncing and flashbacks. I like this editing technique as it not something we see in videos all the time. The fact that it's fast paced illustrates how unexpected the situation was for her and also portrays her feelings/ emotions as she is shattered and heartbroken. It also a contrast of the track as it is a slow song but it goes really well with the video as they have dialogue in between the scenes. After this scene, she starts to sing to the camera, almost connecting to her audience because she gives direct eye contact to the camera. Then it goes to the flashbacks and more cutaways between the present day and her singing directly to the camera. 

Towards the end there were scenes of her in a white, thin draped material, singing in the rain, but this time she is not singing directly to the camera, its almost as if shes singing to god (as she is looking to the sky) because she want the pain to be taken away (praying almost through her lyrics). She then takes her boyfriend back as she is in love with him but then actually catches him cheating on her again. Her best friend and her boyfriend run out of the house and go inside the car, driving really fast. They have an accident and both die. The video ends with her in full black clothes, throwing two red roses at the house steps she stayed in (possibly her boyfriends or best friends house) to illustrate that she is heartbroken yet respectful enough to visit them. The two roses could also symbolize their love or the friendship/ relationship she had with them both.

Keyisha is the main character in the video. She lip syncs and has dialogue in between scenes. The reason why there is dialogue is because this video is a short story, so it explains what happens from beginning to end and how she gets through it.

This music video has a variety of camera angles/ shots such as medium shots in the scenes where she is lip syncing to the camera, possibly to show how angry and painful she felt through her facial expressions and body language. There were wide shots in these scenes too. Furthermore, there were bird eye view shots of the moment she locked herself in the room in the beginning, when she found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her with her best friend. This was done to see her body language and facial expressions too as she was unexpectedly shocked and heartbroken. The fact that she didn't cry in the video shows how much of a strong personality she had.

The target audience is again for people who have been in a relationship but have been cheated on, possibly teenagers and over. As it is a relatable subject for many people, it would attract them into buying this record, which is also how she would connect to her audience as they understand what it feels like to be heartbroken.

I really like the fast paced cutaway scenes of this video and we might use them between the lip syncing scenes that we will be doing in our video. 

R. Kelly ft. Usher - Same Girl

This is also a narrative and performance based music video and it is about two male best friends who talk about the girl they love and are shocked to find out the similarities between them. They then assume it's the "same girl" playing both of them at the same time. So they decide to trick her by taking her out to dinner and both of them would show up so she wouldn't know what to do or what to say. As they wait for the girl, two twins arrive (so the girl in fact had a twin with a similar personality to her) the guys are shocked at this view they have, so now they are the ones who don't know what to say or do.

I really like how the video starts off with a black screen and from the middle the view of a city appears as it opens up. There are a lot of cutaways in between each scene for example when they are messaging through the phone, speaking through the phone and I also like how they have a split screen in the beginning too because it shows both of their facial expressions and body language as they find out that the girl they are both in love with are the same person. Furthermore, there were close ups of both of their faces when they were talking to each other on the phone. Extreme close ups were used also when they were describing the similarities of her features such as her tattoo, her beauty spot and her figure. Moreover, there were dialogues in between the scenes where Usher and R. Kelly are actually having conversations and some were sung by them both instead of having a separate conversation. The video ends with them both singing directly at the camera to connect with their audience and it closes down from the top and the bottom until it the screen goes black.

Usher, R. Kelly and the girl they assume that's playing with them are the main characters. They are all in character throughout the video. The dialogue in the video represents/ helps the audience understand what is going on, such as the "same girl" was cheating on them both.

The target audience for this specific music video is probably for their fans and for people who have been caught in a similar situation even though it is a little bit unrealistic. Its almost as if the music video had a plot twist to it, so it wasn't what the actual song/ lyrics were saying but they did it for entertainment purposes. The audience would be encouraged to buy it as it is a 'funny' situation to be in but the song would be purchased because many people could also relate to this situation where the same person is using/ playing with them.

I really liked how the cutaways of one scene (for example when Usher was talking through the phone, it was taken in many different angles and shots) would go with the beat of the song, so we could use this. But I also liked how there was a split screen. I think we could use this when Nana's girlfriend is calling him but he isn't picking up, instead he is getting ready to commit suicide, so it would be a contrast of their actions. (Nana would be very serious and concentrating on the water filling up the bath tub whilst his girlfriend would be worried about him and is eager for him to pick up the phone).