The music video from Bat for Lashes, for the song "What's a Girl to Do" cleverly breaks the conventions of a typical music video however keeps the audience entertained and their enjoyment in watching it. Below are the conventions of this music video and whether these conventions breaks the rules of the generic music video.
Typical Locations: There is only one location shown in this video, a dark road going through a woodland area. As this video could only be shot on location, this breaks the rules as the majority of music videos are filmed in front of green screens in a studio, to look like other places, or are filmed in a studio decorated in order to look like something else, for example, a dressing room (as seen in the video Hey Ya.) There is a small piece of footage that features on the side of the road, where two figures (neither are the artist) are dressed in all black and all white, one figure is holding a jackal lantern. This, is a way, breaks the conventions as this scene was filmed on location, fitting to the style of the video and the iconography of the artist.
Typical Characters: The main focus for the audience is the lead singer of Bat for Lashes, she is positioned centre screen in order to grab their attention. She acts as a "Protagonist" for this music video, thus conforming to the conventions. Other characters include up to 6 cyclists in animal masks and the two figures at the side of the road in all black and all white. The cyclists almost act as backing dancers in this video as on certain lines in the song or beats in the music they perform stunts or clap, taking their hands off the handle bars; if we do consider the cyclists as backing dancers then we can say that they conform to the typical character conventions of a music video. While the two figures at the side of the road would also conform to the conventions as they would be classed as extras.
Iconography: The iconography of Bat for Lashes is clearly shown throughout this music video - the costume given to the "Protagonist" is eye catching and would fit into the alternative fashion sense. The style of the song fits this alternative style as does the animal masks used by the cyclists. The image of the band or artist, in a music video, is almost always present in the footage, as it is here.
Typical Narrative: There is no obvious narrative present in this video despite the lyrics of the song connoting love, no love story or theme is apparent in the footage. A brief moment of story or plot is seen with the two figures on the side of road, as the camera focuses on them the figure in black lets go of the balloons they were holding. What this signifies to the audience, I am unsure, though this alternative theme of the video fits the artist complete. Despite being no solid narrative, this video is not a performance based video either as we see no instruments or microphones, we only see the artists sing. This lack of narrative however allows anticipation to grow for the audience as we establish that, come every chorus in the song, the cyclists in animal masks will appear behind the artist, who is also riding a bike.
Typical Media Language: There is little to no editing in this video - it is at 1:16 where the camera zooms from a long medium shot to a medium shot to the artist and pans to the left to focus on the figures at the side of the road, before panning back to the artist in a full long shot. No close up's are used either, this implies that the majority of the footage was filmed in one take as there appears no cutting point in the footage. High key lighting is used in this video, though is is not used to the extreme as the video is set in the night. So far, this video has broken every convention in media language as for all the reasons above, the lyrics do no relate to the footage on screen and there is an extreme lack of the male gaze, however the audience do not question this as this breaking of the conventions links in with the artists iconography.
Ideology: There are no dominant ideologies present in this video, for example "good defeats evil" however as this video is not controversial or shocking for the audience to watch there are no alternative ideologies present.
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