Video Analysis

Ellie Goulding - The Writer video analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ru2glqXAg

The music video of Ellie Goulding's 'The Writer', she is shown as being represented as being part of the 'Electropop' genre by being linked to a traditional Pop music video that has a romantic theme. This is shown by using close up shots to show emotion from the character in the video, which is presented by the first image, showing how induced Ellie Goulding is to focusing on the camera. As the narrative of this video is about changing as a person in order to get noticed by a certain individual person, whom you are attracted to. The other type of shot used are long shots that are taken from a high angle, which could suggest that Ellie Goulding is being observed by the certain person she is attracted to, from the narrative. The last image I have print screened from the music video is an establishing shot of which shows the character and a lighthouse, this suggests that as it is a shot near at the end of the video, that when she reaches the lighthouse, then she will find the certain person, when she reaches there. The lighting and colours in the video are bright and colourful, such as yellow, cream and oranges, to me this suggests this video is very positive and calming, shows that an interpriation of the narrative is mellow, and that the climax of the ending, will occur how it should end. In terms of Ellie Goulding, getting to be happy at the end of the video, after going through many fields to find the destination of finding that special person. This music video is targeted at the fans of Ellie Goulding this is good as this video shows a different approach of how she as an artist is presented. So this would interest her fans more, also shows that her genre of music 'Electropop' does not always have to be kept to the similar narratives that normally relate to Electropop tracks. Overall this music video has a meaning of about Ellie Goulding getting noticed, by the man she is attracted to. This video has a lots of bright white colouring, to suggest she is in her perfect world, like is living a dream. This music video could be inspiring to creating my music video as the type of settings Ellie Goulding uses is mainly outdoors, in fields and forests, so this could be included in my video, so an essence of originality to keep my video, still in relation into her style of music video.

The second music video I will be analysing Ellie Goulding's- Guns and Horses. The genres that this track is from represents electropop and folktronica. The music video has a simple narrative of which Ellie Goulding is portraying a character that is walking through the woods, and is followed by her backing dancers, when she reaches the end of the music video Ellie turns around and reveals the production set of where the music video took place. Ellie Goulding is being represented as a young girl who is out in the woods all on her own, along her way through the journey through the forest, she is joined by soliders, which turn out to be her backing dancers in the video. So this represents that in this video, having backing dancers is random, as they do not relate to the music video. So this representation could represent that Ellie Goulding herself is slightly random in her personality, or how she makes decisions in her life. In the music video, her costume suggests that the clothes are smart casual as she wears a blue checkered shirt, in which is appropriate for a casual walk through a forest. A mixture of different camera shots were used on the main character. This included mid shots, the mid shot is to focus on the character singing, so it shows concentration, on the character, without showing too much emotion. This type of shor applies to the audience as they feel that they are focusing on the whole character without realising it. Also long shots are used to show the location of the woods in the music video. Also are used to show all of the subjects that are involved in the video. This is good as this also shows the staging in the shot shown in the second shot shown above. It shows that the main character is in the centre of the frame, and the backing dancers are placed behind, to show her importance and that she is in control, suggesting that the music video is all about her. The type of audience this music video applies to is the fans of Ellie Goulding, also people who are interested in artists that focus on a unusual representation of how to show a narrative in a video, this video would be good example of that as it is unique. This video does not produce many meanings that could be symbolic, apart from the low key lighting might suggest that the location is quite dull, but when there is some people in the woods, that the woods come alive, and the characters brighten up the location.

The ideas that as a group that we came up with consisted of with that we had some inspiration from the types of locations that she uses in her videos. For example in The Writer' she has shots of outdoor locations that are in fields and on top of cliffs, so we thought logically that we live locally to the coastline, so will have easy access to film on top of some cliffs. So this developed our idea of our character roaming around on the cliffs as part of her dream, that will possibly cut to the character roaming around in a urban area. Another idea we got inspiration from her was that we discovered that in her videos, she doesn't really seem to have an actual narrative to the video, so we decided to add a new element to her music video that we would create a narrative to 'hook' the audience into watching the video. We had an idea that we were going to use some background dancers, as featured in Guns and Horses she has background dancers in the woods, they start off as extras, then become part of the video. So we had the idea of including background dancers that would be dressed in pyjamas to make the music video seem surreal and to confuse the character who is in the dream.