The music video of Ultrabeat, Pretty Green Eyes, starts with multiple extreme close up of different parts of a woman’s torso, face, legs and hands, which exposes the woman to the audience but restricting the audience from relating to her completely, which creates enigma.The amount of flesh on show whilst these extreme close ups of her getting ready for what seems like a night out are occurring reflecting minimum clothing on the woman, which links to the conventions of a night club, where this genre of music is played most.The use of costume such as fish net tights and a revealing backless top conform to the conventions of typical dance music, and also suggest a very sexual hyped scenario. Although the woman is dressed in very provocative clothing, I feel the opening to this music video would engage a universal audience, as the men would be enticed and allured by the attract woman and lack of clothing, but the women could possible relate to the situation of the woman, for example a close up shot of a makeup pallet, connoting femininity.
The setting at the start of the video is unclear to the audience, as there are a lot of extreme close ups and seeming to of used a blurred effect on some shots, this does not allow the audience to gain an establishing shot of the setting, which could create enigma with the fact the audience are curious about where this woman is.
The use of an extreme close up shot of the woman’s eye enables the setting and mood to switch and this is done by her blinking. Her eye has excessive make up on which is a convention of the night clubbing scene and therefore dance music. The music begins to kick in as the setting changes and fits with the nightclub setting shown. The use of quick, straight cut editing enables this to become successful and smoothly transition into a new setting.
The lighting within the frame then gets much dark to portray a night time setting, which could link towards a club and also connotes a mysterious scenario. Again, there is provocative, extreme close ups of parts of the woman’s body which then transitions into an extreme long shot of 3 attractive woman in what looks like close to underwear. The lack of lighting within the scene restricts the audience of a full view, but which intrigues and engages the audience into watch more, therefore creating an enigma. There are no men dancers within the frame, just woman, which portrays dominance with woman within the dance genre but portrays that they have to use there body to gain identity.There are then multiple medium shots of the women dancing playfully, using there body to engage the audiences attention, also dancing in beat with the music and using the tracking camera movement, portraying they are the importance within the frame. The use of women with little clothing is a key convention within dance music as they are trying to suggest realistic situations that the audience would be in, for example dancing in a club to this genre of music.
There is then a close up, two shot of the male artists of the song, who looks directly into the camera view maybe to try and engage with the audience and show his importance. However, he only appears within the music video on a few occasions, maybe portraying that to sell the song, this video needs to be dominated by woman, as they are the main target demographic, but also entice the men, therefore creating a larger demographic, which would tend to be around the age of 18-26 as these are the people which can legally go out night clubbing and tend to be free to do what they want with not tie downs.There are then multiple jump cut edits which link to the beat of the music, where you can see a medium shot of girls dancing with the setting of a night club, which fits with the genre of the music. This connotes the style of the music and the typical setting where the music would be played. The flashing lights also add to the night club element within the video, but also create mystery within the frame as you don’t get a clear view of what’s going on, which also occurs because of the fast edits.
This goes on for an extensive amount of time during the video, swapping from different women and using close ups of different parts of their bodies, but also the use of a flashing close up of the artist’s face every once in a while, which could be used as a reminder to the audience of the artist’s of the song.Through the flashing lighting and multiple jump cuts, you see smouldering facial expressions towards the camera off the women dancing, portraying they are using there femininity and sexuality to entice the audience. The fact the women are also dancing together, very closely, and there are close ups of the woman touching each others face and waists, could create an enigma into if there is a relationship between them or their sexual orientation which could be situations the audience could be going through.The club theme is clear throughout the whole of this video and linking dance music and clubbing together which is a key convention of this genre. The use of the flashing lighting and fast edits, all fitting with the beat of the music, engages the audience and the women within the frame also.
There is a medium shot of the woman’s top being undone and the end, which links to the medium shot of her top being done up at the start of the clip, showing it’s the end of a night, possibly leading to sexual situations as it was some else taking the top off.The way the music video had been put together I feel works very effectively as the plot to the video is a typical situation the audience may find themselves in, but it was slightly repetitive and the fact of lack of lighting which interrupted the audiences view could have made them lack in interest slightly.
There is no obvious sign of the use of Todorov's theory within this music video as it is constantly fixed on a club-like scene and a woman dancing. However, this woman could be seen as a 'princess' when looking at Propp's theory and the close up of the mans face we see, could be seen as a 'hero', but this is not clear towards the audience.
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