My Favourite Music Videos: Art, Colour and Beauty
18:18
I am very sorry for the lengthy absence between this post and my last one. Life in the Students' Union has been extremely busy. That is not to say I have not been writing, because if you didn't know, I am deputy editor of the university newspaper and have published many pieces, so please take a look at mine and others' articles at www.anfocal.ie.
Without further ado I return to the world of blogging with a little post on music videos. I am keenly interested in film and visuals if you didn't know. How something comes across visually is very important to me. So I would like to take you through some music videos I love, largely because of their cinematography. I've picked these based on how they look and I also liked the songs these videos are made for. These videos are in no particular order! The aim of this post is to encourage you explore music videos more, to think about the imagery, symbolism, the cinematography and how it all fits together.
I suppose it's me showing you art in a sense. Music videos now have more importance than ever, we all know you can win awards for a good music video. They are short films, conveying emotion, telling us stories and showing us the visual parts of a song.
The video stars beautiful model Gigi Hadid. Three seconds into the video you are shown interesting imagery. There's a largely blue colour palette within the video at the beginning. I really like the visual effects in the video. One of the prominent things you see throughout the video is the character Gigi is playing using her hands a lot, throwing them out in front of them or looking at them. This for me creates a sense of otherworldness. The video alternates from a dark setting. At times there is rich bronze/orange lighting in some scenes. Some scenes are dream like in quality and also I find the movement with hands slightly unnerving at times. So for me there's an element of darkness and an allusion of nightmare. I personally like this video because it's unusual in some aspects and immediately when I saw the image of Gigi above with the layers of colour I was intrigued. As for the song itself, this would be my favourite Calvin Harris song, I don't particularly like any of his other stuff but there's always a first for everything.
If you read my blog you'll know that I cried when I first watched this video, because of the song's significance to me and the symbolism within the video/song. I also blogged about the video in full, which you can find here. It really is a beautiful music video and I would go so far to say that this is my favourite Taylor Swift music video simply because of how it looks. Funnily enough, like the previous video, there is a lot of blue to be seen. For some reason it looks really beautiful. Especially the image chosen above. Whether the footage shot has CGI in it or whether it's natural, the video combines beautiful scenery with some ethereal and outlandish imagery. It is set in the beautiful country of New Zealand. Joseph Kahn directed two other videos of Taylor's such as "Wildest Dreams" and "Bad Blood", both unique videos in their own right. "Out Of The Woods" is a video full of symbolism and its one that means a lot to me. As for the song itself, if you read my fully post on it you'll see that it's very personal.
I only watched this video and heard this song for the first time a few days ago. Yet I found them intriguing enough to talk about. The opening seconds show Birdy (full name Jasmine van den Bogaerde) who looks someone of an ancient painting. The interesting lighting causes a rippling effect on screen. The orange lighting throughout the video is gorgeous, I'm interested in the weird, dark and hooded figures in the video. Perhaps they are meant to symbolise demons? Who knows? The thing about this video is it isn't overly complicated and I like that. From 2:25 onwards there are such rich colours in the clothing whether it's a bright red or rich navy blue. The slow motion also adds a fascinating element to the video. I think that this video suits the song and also looks like something you could make yourself. The song itself has a nice message and the melody is something I could find myself swaying to.
This is a song that I tend to listen to when I'm in a certain mood. The video is absolutely gorgeous and has a sort of mystery within. It literally is just the lead singer of CHVRCHES, Lauren Mayberry walking through water set against a luminescent and ever changing horizon. Prominent colours are yellows, blues, greys and purples. I think this video totally suits the electronic sound of the song. I'm curious as to how they went about making this video. What I find very clever is that no matter what colour is curling through the background, you still find yourself focusing on Lauren. Which is important I think. I am fairly sure that the main reason I like this video so much is the fact that it is pretty to look at. In my opinion if I screenshotted any part of this video it would look good. The song itself has personal significance to me. CHVRCHES as a whole are a fantastic band to listen to it, even if you are not an electronic fan.
When I got the idea for this post, I actually found it very hard to choose videos that I liked enough to talk about. I say it way too much, but the cinematography in ANYTHING visual is incredibly important to me. If something looks wrong to me visually, I'm not going to engage with it as much, simple as. I hope this post opened your eyes to aspects of music videos you may not have thought about before. You also might have discovered songs you've never heard before which is always a gift in itself.
All pictures used are merely decorative and belong to their respective owners.
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