AOB4 - Moving Image Research

Focus Group
This is the feedback I gained from my music video treatment.

Research Report
This is what I gained from researching music videos.

Music Video Analysis: Lady Gaga - Telephone





 I have chosen to analyse the music video to Lady Gaga's synth-pop track, "Telephone". The music video is directed by Jonas Akerlund, and follows a distinct narrative structure. The video is over nine minutes long, and follows on from a previous Gaga music video - "Paparazzi", ironically directed by Jonas Akerlund, who has cleverly directed both videos to continue with the running theme. The video for "Paparazzi" finishes with Lady Gaga sent to prison for poising her on-screen boyfriend.

In "Telephone", we begin by seeing a variety of establishing shots; train tracks, prison fencing and prison courtyards, appearing on screen for around 4/5 seconds, which automatically sets the mood for the music video. Throughout these series of shots, we see large, embossed text embedded on top of the captions, stating who's staring in the video (Lady Gaga, Beyonce), the director (Jonas Akerlund), and the studio that has developed the music video (A serial pictures FIX). The video tells the story of Lady Gaga's life in prison, and how one of her friends, "Honey B", portrayed by Beyonce, "bails" Lady Gaga from jail. We then see the duo go on to mass murder and poison every customer sat in an American Diner.

There are a number of different shots used within the video, to help Lady Gaga's controversial image to be conveyed - for example, Akerlund uses a low angle shot on Lady Gaga and Beyonce several times to enforce their power and dominance throughout the narrative of the music video. It emphasises their characters - murderers, vilenesses and cellmates. Due to the vast amount of different locations, the video uses a many different establishing shots to set the scene and build up the setting, for example, when the prison is introduced, a montage of around seven different establishing shots are used to slowly introduce the prison. We see prison gates, prison walls, prison courtyards. When they're shooting the scenes at the "Diner", we have an establishing shot of the Diner itself, and then an establishing shot of the customers eating at eatery. There are many tracking shots in this video, for instance, when we see Lady Gaga walking down the prison corridoor, dancing with a troup of girls, it tracks her movements to the other end of the corridoor, this helps to convey a message of surveillance.

History of Music Videos
In class, we took part in an exercise to research a certain crucial event that has developed music videos and present it to the class: this is our findings.

Director Board
I performed some excessive research into music videos directed by the same person. I chose to analyse Jonas Akerlund.

Artist Board
To research further into the history of music videos, I analysed five videos featuring Lady Gaga.