WHY DO A BALLAD MUSIC VIDEO?

WE SHOULD DO A BALLAD MUSIC VIDEO BECAUSE...

Most ballad music videos are very simple and mainly involve an artist singing for the majority of the video. This means that we will only have to recruit one actor to be in our video as most of it will be focusing on them

We can make the music video simple but a effective by using explicit and implicit meanings as most are about love so we can use love connotations throughout our video.

Most pop artists will produce a ballad music video once in their career so even if we don’t directly like the genre, we will most likely one ballad song due to the artist.

We can afford to be creative with camera angles and narrative as some involve a love story between two characters which we can be creative with.

Conventions of a ballad music video

• These are a few of the conventions that are seen within a ballad music video.

• For example, in ballad music video a convention is that there are often two characters with a love relationship that develop throughout the video.

• In ballad videos there is a higher proportion of the artist performance with often close ups and emotional facial expressions.

• The lighting is often soft and simple to ensure it doesn’t distract the audience away from the narrative or the artist performance which is like the other aspects of mise-en-scene.

• Although I have listed the possible problems that may occur when trying to recreate this in our music video I have then suggested ways around these to show that we may not get to these problems if we eliminate and think about them before.

SUCCESSFUL EXAMPLES Sinead O'Connor 'Nothing Compares to You'

Simple costume and settingJust plain black with minimal make-up

Use of the same close up camera angle throughout the whole of the performance section of the video (the majority of the video)

This video won many awards such as three moonmen at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards,Video of the Year (O'Connor became the first female artist to be awarded with it), Best Female Video and Best Post-Modern Video.

O'Connor's tears toward the end were unplanned making the song and video much more emotional

SIMILARLY...

Like Sinead O'Connor's video, the costume is very simple and location is nothing exotic

Whole video is shot in black and white, again to not distract the audiences attention

The video is simply just the artist walking the streets of Paris

Because ballads usually have strong and emotional lyrics it allows the video to be simple and to not be too distracting away from the lyrics. If there were to be loads of dancers and a complicated narrative it would distract the audiences attention. Meaning doing a ballad has the potential to be simple to produce.

The location evokes style and romance. And shooting early in the morning allows you to focus on Adele in this lonely and emotional space

TARGET AUDIENCE

• Depending on the artist of the ballad, it will change the target audience for the song.

• If we were to choose a more modern/pop artist such as Beyoncé or Jessie J, their ballads would still appeal to the pop genre target audience as they are still up beat, where as if we were to choose a typical ballad artist such as Mariah Carey, it will appeal to much older woman or homosexual men with experience of love and break up

SUGGESTIONS OF BALLAD MUSIC VIDEOS

Lana Del Rey, Young and Beautifulwww.youtube.com/watch?v=o_1aF54DO60

Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ballwww.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YICuUtkjlg (directors Cut)

‘Hot summer nights, mid JulyWhen you and I were forever wildThe crazy days, city lights’ ‘Will you still love me

When I'm no longer young and beautiful?’

‘We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain We jumped never asking why’

‘It slowly turned, you let me burnAnd now, we're ashes on the ground’