More Conventions of Music Videos

 I feel like I need some more inspiration for certain shots and techniques for my music video. Here, I'm gonna focus on budget music videos, because I want to be realistic.

I'm gonna be analyzing Black Sabbath's Paranoid live music video from Top Of The Pops. Even though it's live, it uses a lot of techniques that I could use in my music video. The intro shot is interesting to me, as it's a closeup of the guitarists, and zooms out to show the drummer. A lot of shots have movement, as to keep the attention of the viewer. There are many shots that start out wide, and then zoom to focus on the bassist's or guitarist's hand that plucks the string. Shots also start zoomed into one band member's face, and slowly zooms out to show the rest of the band. There's a really cool clip where the camera switches from a zoomed in shot of the guitar to the bass and back really fast during the intermission that I want to incorporate.

In that really cool clip, the camera switches from the bassist to the guitarist on every 16th note, around 8 times per second. I will do this by having one continuous shot of the guitar, and then one continuous shot of another instrument, and switch to it every 16th or 8th note.

    Next, I'll be analyzing The XX's Crystalized music video. It's interesting how much a director can do with a projector. The camera shifts focus to different band members to keep the viewers attention. The projector changes the "overlay" on the members, who are all on the same wall. When the chorus happens, the overlay becomes more intense, and its pattern starts to change to match the chorus's energy. The visuals can get a little bit psychedelic, with one being a flower. In the breakdown, the overlay darkens, and allows for focus on the singers. When both singers are singing, the camera does a close up on each of their faces, which shows the dynamic between them.

The director uses extreme closeups on one singer's face to emphasize key lyrics and movement into the chorus.