Artist Study
For my artist study I chose the band Fifth Harmony. The three videos I have analysed are:
- That's My Girl
- Work From Home
- Worth It
My reason for choosing Fifth Harmony to study is that they're popular and well known in their genre - pop / r&b - and personally I really like their music. They are very good at encouraging their female audience to be proud and stand up for what they believe in with their empowering lyrics.
The first video - That's my Girl - is a performance video. The video is set in a dystopian world with the five members helping people who have been stuck. They then encourage other women to start helping people, showing how they're strong. The band is trying to show how they're strong, independent, powerful, unafraid and influential to everyone. The lyrics don't really match the video but still present women as strong and know how to pick themseleves up after they've been broken and how they should be proud to show their power and control. They split the screen time equally between each of the five members and they're all singing while having a background plot line to the video. It's also emphasising it's performance aspect by including dance routines along with their singing. My personal opinion of the video is that it's different to their other videos with it's unusual location, it's a bit more obscure with the desert city - their other videos set places more bright and busy e.g: motel, fashion runway, fairground. It's still fun to watch and the members still keep their sexualised image while also being empowering message. From this video I could use the variety of different lighting that changes throughout the vidceo in my own project.
The second video - Work From Home - is also a performance video. The video is on a construction site with the members dancing and singing around it, generally being distracting to the male workers at the site. The band wants to show themselves as sensual, seductive women who hold a certain power over men and that they're more important than anything they're doing. The lyrics are very similar to the video with the premise being able to work from home instead of at the site, they still imply that the girls have power over the men and in control with their looks and appearance. it's effective that each member of the group is related to a different job, provides the fact taht it doesn't matter what your job is they'll still be able to distract you with their body. My personal opinion is that it's my favourite of their music videos as the song is one of my favourites of theirs. The video is fun, entertaining and sexy to watch and once again focuses on all the members for each of their different parts. I could possibly use the variety of different shots in my own video and include different locations for each different verse / chorus like they do.
The final video - Worth It - is another performance video. The video is again encouraging women in power and embracing their independence in a work situation. The lyrics fit with the video as they depict women in power, independence, how people should have faith in women being 'worth It's when it comes to professional jobs. It features all of the band members in different jobs - Not unlike in Work From Home - showing that no matter what job it is women are capable of being good. It features Kid Ink but he's never the main focus of the video, neither are the other men in the video, emphasises their point of women in control should be the focus of the future. My personal opinion depends on the song being the first Fifth Harmony song I actively listened to when it came out in 2015, it's my second favourite video of theirs as it's fun, sexy and easy to watch multiple times as it's quite simple in its overarching plot. I could use the way it changes each shot with the underlying bass beats to the song in my own video.
