Textual Analysis - Paloma Faith

I decided to look at the music video for New York by Paloma Faith - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki0xBb2wbr4. Not only because I quite like this song, but because she is an up and coming artist who therefore will be looking to use cutting edge methods within her music videos, which I hope we can take inspiration from :)

Camera-work -

• At the beginning of the video the camera doesn't show Paloma's face until she starts to sing. This entices the viewer and also establishes the singer as the key part of the music video as so much attention is placed around her without even seeing her face yet.
  
• There is also many close-ups which relay focus directly onto Paloma.

• There is also a large amount of wide shots, which are framed by the New York landscape either side and special amount of lighting. Here we see the bowling alley also centred and Paloma in the middle. This combines very excentric ideas, something we are hoping to use effectively within our music video :)

• Furthermore many over the shoulder shots are used, imparticular from behind the man who is featured throughout the video - placing Paloma in a position of importance over him as we can see her face, therefore she is the focus of the shot.
  

Editing -

• The first shot we see goes from a blurred and soft focus to a visable image, this relays the audiences focus on the revealed image, which is this case is various shots of the singer, I really like this idea however I feel I don't think it would be right for our Music Video as it seems to suit the more classy and elegant videos such as 'New York'.
  
• Another part which I particularly like which uses focus again, is when both characters are looking away from eachother out of focus and then as their heads turn together with a couple of seconds of music that has no lyrics. This I think is an effective way to use the music as it is an memorable shot.

• The song itself has a reletively slow pace, however by the end the straigh cut edits pick up and so does the tempo, this is clever and effective and a method which I have seen in many Music Videos to create pace. This is something we will be using in ours too :)
  
• Another piece of Editing which I thought was imaginative was when a choir came into the song and then we saw them within a bowling ball, and then the next shot showed them in full screen singing. This is similar to the use of a mobile phone within Katy Perrys video and once again it is used very effectively to link two shots together.

Mise-en-scene:

• Paloma Faith is wearing glamourous make-up which is very straightcut and illuminating. Furthermore her costume also includes classy earrings and ball/prom style dresses. This is a good link with the theme of the song 'New York' as a uptown and glamourous city.


• Lighting throughout is very bright and distinguishing, especially the use of neon sign lights as a intertextual link with New York, these are bold and a re-occuring theme throughout. Similarily there are many themes linked to New York which run alongside the whole Music Video, these were picked up when I did some Audience Research surrounding this music video. Here two students commented on the different links to New York for example: Statue of Liberty, Times Square light and the Brooklyn Bridge. They both agreed that this was a clever way of manipulating the song title and grabbing viewers attention.


• One focal use of lighting is a spotlight placed on Paloma in many of the bowling alley shots where she is sitting on the lane in a performance based shot singing to the camera.

Sound -

• The opening sound to the song is very delicate and this is complemented beautifully by focus being pulled in and out of shot, it establishes the song well and works excellently.
  
• As the first line of the song starts, there is two discrete ding noises in the sound, here we see the back lights of the bowling alley flash on and off, this is a great and simple example of a reletionship between sound and visuals.


• We also see a shot representing a reletionship between lyrics and visuals where you see Paloma Faith 'act out' pouring a drink for the line "she poured the drinks and she poured the power" It works well linking the lyrics to thw moving image of the video.
  
  
  

Jess :)