Saturday 16 June 2012

Research & Planning: Music video analysis [3] Cassie - King Of Hearts


This music video was released in 2012 by the singer Cassie who is also a model. The music is very upbeat, quite a fast tempo and a song you would hear at a party/club, more of a dance/pop genre of music. This could also be categorised as modern R&B. It is a very different and unique style of video as the only person we see in this video is her and a man (who she had said that it was her dressed up as a man). The video looks to be filmed in a mansion as there are many big rooms that she is in with expensive props around her, which are seen in the mise-en-scenes with quite dull lighting, although the artificial lighting is shown to be coming from strobe lights, fire flames and a projector screen as well as light bulbs. The strobe lights follow the beat of the song as well as the editing cuts, as they are quick and change when the beat is heard. There are various costume changes throughout the video, which are quite fashionable and are the style of clothes that would inspire teenagers and young adults to wear, which would be common in this genre and style of video. There is one scene where she is walking down the hallway and the pace seems to have been slowed down to match the tempo of the music and here she is wearing very revealing clothes from a low angle shot showing her strong feminine dominance. There are close up shots of Cassie's face to see her singing along to the lyrics as well as long shots to show her costumes and to show off her womanly figure. The lyrics reflect the camera shots clearly as she says "seduction is your art" and the way she is portraying herself in this video gives the sense of her being seductive by the close ups of her face with her facial expressions as well as her revealing costumes. There is no particular narrative in this video but mostly just the iconography of the genre as it is a dance, upbeat song therefore it is typical for the music video to not really have much relevance to the lyrics. Also, because Cassie is also known for being a model, she shows off her beauty a lot in this video making her female fans and viewers want to copy her style as this is the target audience for the song. However, male viewers would appreciate this video due to the beauty shown and her revealing costumes.

R&B music

"Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B and RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular."

No comments:

Post a Comment