Richmix Education

Today we went on a media trip to Richmix in Bethnal Green. Here we were met by music producers and directors who showed us their work and gave us advice on how to make music videos. Me and Beste found this a great inspiration seeing their work and hearing about how they were made, giving us tips and ideas for when we make our own music video.

Our day consisted of many speech's starting with a morning session with Pete Fraser who is the chief examiner of OCR media studies. He gave us a presentation giving us tips on how to make a successful music video. He showed us a range of examples showing the use of voyeurism and the male gaze.We found that these codes and conventions are nearly almost always used in music videos.

Here are some of the examples we were shown:

At 0:20 we are shown the use of voyeurism where we see a frame within a frame (on the scopitone) of the artist looking back at himself. Then at 1:14 we are shown an example of the male gaze and how it has been used. We are shown this with the use of a downwards panning shot of the lady and her bare legs.

This particular video of 50 Cent's - Candy Shop is another example we were shown which uses a lot of male gaze throughout. This is presented with the use of revealing clothing, sexual innuendos such as the whip and the bath (two females pouring chocolate over themselves).

Voyeurism is also used very much in the music video for example, at 2.55 when the photo frame on the wall shows the female artist singing, again this is a frame within a frame.

At 0.36 voyeurism is used where we are shown the artist Jay-Z through the station screen. We also really like this music video as it is very snappy, various different camera angles have been used which are very effective for example, panning shots, point of view shots, zooming in and out, close up shots etc.

In the afternoon we were shown clips by Liz Kessler who works in the industry and produces music videos, followed by Corin Hardy who works as a music video director. I found it really fascinating hearing about how they managed to produce some of their work on such low budgets. 

Here is one of Corin Hardy's music videos. I love how we can focus on the emotion of the song rather than being distracted by tons of other things going on. Its a very symbolic music video, at one point we are shown dead birds lying on their chests, which could be symbolism of feeling trapped 'No Rest', as freedom and hope are connotations of a bird. However the bird in the video is death, so it could be symbolising that freedom and hope is gone. Also one of these birds was a black crow which has connotations of death.