Codes and Conventions Of Boyband Music Videos

No matter how different the Boybands may be, most of the videos all follow the same codes and conventions which typically seem to appear in Boyband music videos. Below are some of the typical codes and conventions you would expect to see: 

• " The Christ like gesture" - This can be seen as a way of boybands, showing extreme emotions towards the video, audience and song lyrics. - An example of this can be seen in Westlife's video for "Flying Without Wings " 

• Another common feature is a girl/women is normally used in the video, preferably the girl would be who the band are singing about - This can be seen in our video by N'sync in the video for "Gone" and most of their other videos such as "Bye Bye Bye" . 

Most video only focus on one female, however Boyzone famously used a male love interest in their video for "Better" when focusing on Stephan Gately, this could signify his Homosexuality at the time, all the other members were focused around women in the video. 

• To develop a dramatic effect, water can often be dropped on the band member during their videos, also for the sex appeal a target audience of women, the naked top half of the males body being dripped with water will attract their target audience. - This can be seen in Take Thats video "Prey"

More recently the semi naked feature for the male band members can be seen in parts of JLS video for "She makes me wanna". Where we see one member stood on a cliff, semi naked, with what appears to be an oily top half of his body, this can be seen at 0:26. 

• Another common feature is the location, this most often is an abandoned place or a deserted landscape, an example of this could be a cliff top - This can be seen in Westlife's video for "What about now" and Take That's "Patience" . 

• Slow motion can also be used in videos, in order to get across the "male gaze" as the slow motion is mostly focused on the women used in the video - This can be seen Westlife "Up town girl" when the girl take her bobble out of her hair, the slow motion is used to signify everyone is staring at her, focusing all their attention on her beauty. 

EF - Director Study Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts, was the director of the original video for our coursework video 'Gone' by N'sync. Ritts directed the music video in 2001, shortly a year before his death in 2002. 
Herb was born in 1952 in Los Angles, he is an American born director, however to begin with Ritts undertook a career in photography shortly after college, in the 1970's he began by teaching himself, taking picture of friend to begin with.
Over the years Ritts went on to photograph celebrities such as Brooke Shields and Olivier Newton John, for magazine and album covers such as Elle and the album cover for Olivier's 'Physical' in 1981.
He then went on to replicate the pose used by Brooke for the Elle cover, with Madonna for her release of True Blue in 1986. During his photography Ritts often challenged the conventional notions of gender and race an example of this is " The Mask" 1989. 

One of his subjects was a friend's boyfriend, a then-unknown Richard Gere. His shots of the future star led Ritts into the world of celebrity photography with full force. He photographed everyone from Jack Nicholson to Michelle Pfeiffer to Mick Jagger, gaining unprecedented access to many of his subjects, including a paralysedChristopher Reeve and a post-brain surgery Elizabeth Taylor. - IMDB - Source  

The first video Ritts first directed was Madonna's Cherish in 1989, which like most of his videos was shot in black and white, which appears to be a common theme throughout Ritt's videos.


 After its release, "Cherish" received positive feedback from reviewers, who were surprised by the change of content and the lighter image of Madonna's music, on the Billboard Hot 100, "Cherish" became Madonna's sixteenth consecutive top-five single, a record in the Hot 100 history.  - Wiki - Source 


He then went on to win two MTV Video Awards for the work he conducted on the videos for Janet Jackson "Love Will Never Do" in 1990  and Chris Isaak "Wicked Game" in 1991. 


Herb has also directed music video's for Mariah Carey " My All" in 1998, Micheal Jackson " In the closet" in 1992, Britney Spears " Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know" in 2001, his final music video in which he directed before his death was Shakira's " Underneath Your Clothes" in 2002. 


An example of one of Herb's videos which isn't in black and white, going against his normal conventions is 'Underneath Your Clothes' by Shakira. 

All - Timed Lyrics Sheet

Music Vid Ideas Change

After presenting our sample scene to the class, we learnt we had to make some changes to our original idea. To begin with we were going to have one main lead from the band, as our lead role for the narrative idea of the couples break up, however after showing the sample footage of our idea, from audience feedback we have realised it would be easier to have a separate couple and male lead for the narrative and have the band as the performance aspects, maybe in location such as the moors, the park and maybe a different house to where we are filming the couple. 

We are also going to try and film more sample footage through the week, this time we are sticking with the beginning but trying to fit in our montage of picture of the couple hopefully before the music begins, in order to see if our montage will fit in this place or whether we will need to place it somewhere else.

Our idea from the montage of picture at the beginning has come from the opening of the US Sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother', where they use a variety of picture it some form of slideshow, which is the effect we are hoping to have. 
We are hoping to end the montage with the last picture being the main girl taking a picture, which we hope to then lead into a flashback of when that picture was taken, or if this doesn't work we are going to develop the bed scene we used in our first sample footage. 

Week 12 - Podcast 6 - Audience