Ashley Finch Media Studies

Applying Theory

The Verve -Bittersweet Symphony

It is a very simple music video. Tracking is used to capture the lead singer walking towards towards the camera. The Verve used ideas and conventions from the video Unfinished Symphony by Massive Attack which also uses one shot tracking the singer, which moves around her body to create a range of different angles for the audience. The continuously moving angles gives a snapshot of life in a run down suburban setting. The Verve however took this one step further. The also showed a rundown Eastern environment which relates to their target audience. Their attitude in the video conveys them as a band to the audience as carefree, down to earth teenagers, which emphasizes the appeal the video has upon their target audience. The setting emphasizes this by showing where they used to live which again relates to the target audience. The bands attitude to life, as though they don't care, captures their target audiences attention. The only people with the lead singer are his mates (band members) and their individuality again emphasizes the target audiences interest towards the video. Although the ideas are similar to Massive Attacks Unfinished Symphony they are much more pronounced, which is why The Verve's video was more successful.

Fat Lez - Vindaloo

In Fat Lezs - Vindaloo there are clear inter-textual references to The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony. A Richard Ashcroft look a like is deliberately included in the video. The style of the video, including the setting, is also similar to Bittersweet Symphony and again is completely deliberate. This is only apparent to the audience as both The Verve and Massive Attack have previously used these conventions.

The variety of characters used mainly all relate to the target audience as they represent England and typical stereotypes from England.

How does this link to theory which applys to film trailers?

Clearly none of these videos have a narrative voice. Unlike a film trailer which uses a narrative voice to illustrate a story line and leave questions in their target audiences mind which encourages them to go and see the film. The music videos use lyrics to capture their target audiences attention, whereas a film trailer uses its narrative voice. The narrative voice can either be omniscient or a character from the film. We have decided to use an omniscient voice to distant the all seeing voice from the film. We are aiming want to convey a unbiased view of the three main girl characters to the audience and therefore decided not to use one of their voices to narrate the trailer as we thought that this would then limit our different camera shots.