Analysis of music video - Katy Perry

Katy Perry stars as geeky teenager Kathy Terry in her video Last Friday Night (TGIF). This music video was directed by Marc Klasfeld, also known for directing videos by Pixie Lott to Bon Jovi. This pop video is different to Katy Perrys' other videos, although all are light hearted and fun it is the first to be shown as a short movie. The video is clearly a Pop video from the upbeat tempo, business of the video and vivid colours.

The lyrics are illustrated by the visuals. The song is about a party on Friday night and the visuals are showing the party. We see 'Kathy' the morning after the party having a flash back to the party, we see this visually rather than through the lyrics.

Instrumentals are illustrated by people playing instruments, (Hanson and Kenny G).
The video does cut to the beat but not obviously. I think this is because they are making the music to be almost like a sound track to this short movie. Also because it is a messy party the fact that it doesn't always cut to the beat almost emphasises this.

There are a lot of close ups of the artist and her new image makes her comical. This makes a connection between her and the audience as they see her having a laugh and therefore feel like they know her more than they do as they can laugh with her.

Because of the nature of the video, it turns voyeurism on its head and the notion of looking. They are all 'geeky' characters and so there is not much view of the female body which is usually expected in music videos these days. There are however some characters for female gaze eg 'jocks' with six packs.
After her make over there are some notions of sexual displays as the boys are looking at her differently and she wakes up in bed with a guy.

The video is narrative based as we can easily establish a stroy line of a young girl going to a party, seeing a guy she likes, getting a make over, getting the guy and waking up in bed with him. We see this all through a party which could be seen as a performance.

Analysis of music video - Pink

P!nk - Try





I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of the artist P!nk, however, being a fan of dance I love this video. The video has therefore changed my opinion of P!nk showing that a music video is more important to the product than I initially thought.




This video is quite different from from P!nks' previous videos and changes her tough girl image that is seen in previous music videos such as 'raise your glass' and we see her as quite vulnerable.
Most of her previous videos have been directed by Dave Meyers, however 'Try' was directed by Florida Sigismondi which is why it is so different to her previous videos.


This video uses dance to display the narrative of the song, the dance moves match the tone of the music. They move in time with the music to match the lyrics. The camera work also works along side to match both the lyrics and dance. The moves match the smooth gentle music, when the music becomes more beaty the actions in the video become harsher. Also as the tempo of the music becomes faster so does the dance and the editing of the video.
The visuals cut to the beat of the music.



Goodwin suggests that a good music video includes intertextuality and voyeurism. This video doesn't show any clear evidence of intertextuality but does however show voyeurism to some level. This is because the dance, at some stages, has sexual suggestions and also neither of them are wearing that much clothing. There are also notions of looking in the video, firstly in the mirrors and secondly there is a long shot of the two of them in the house and it feels as though you are looking in on them from afar.

The mise-en-scene is minimalist and bare. The house they are in is not decorated or homely and the other location is a large open space like a desert. This makes her look quite small and this along with her actions makes her look quite helpless which relates to the lyrics.
There are a lot of close ups of her face in the video which is important in selling the product and also to have feeling and empathy towards her which matches the tone of the video. The location and camera work make this video feel realistic which is important as it bridges the gap between the artist and audience.

I like this music video as it is different from other music videos in the same genre, however I think it would be hard to successfully produce a dance based music video as we would need professional dancers in order for it to look good.