Music video from 1980's

I watched a pop song from the 1980's as part of my research into what is needed in a pop video and what it is all about. I wanted to see if music videos back then had the same conventions in their videos as they do now days, and if they started the trends in terms of camera angles and costumes.

The song I researched was Michael Jackson - The girl is mine,

and I thought this would be a good song to research because Michael Jackson is considered the 'King of pop'. First of all the title of the song is a typical convention in the fact that its what you would expect a pop song to be called. In previous research I have learnt that pop songs are generally about love or life, and so the tile is following that trend.

This is one of the of the first things you see in the music video and its of the main girl in the video with her friends. You can tell who the main girl is through the excellent use of camera movement, angles and lighting. The woman in the middle is the main girl in the video. The camera angle on this part when introducing them always made sure that she was in the middle and the main focus. In the editing it shows close up shots of her so the audience is aware of which girl to be looking at. In terms of lighting you can see that she is in the most light and in most focus, this lets people know that she is important. I found this useful as there is a group of people but through the use of camera angles, movement, lighting and editing you can make out who is the most important person in the group.

In terms of fashion which is a key convention with pop music, the girls hair was something that was very popular and fashionable in those days. So despite it being from 30 years ago they still follow the same conventions of using the latest fashion to attract viewers and make the video more appealing. The same can be said for what Michael Jackson is wearing. He will be wearing the latest clothes no matter what the location is as he is setting a trend for the audience of the music video.

One thing that I noticed was that three was very little lighting, and the lighting that was there it was always focused on the main two characters in the video. It made an effect in a way that made it seem as though it was shadows that were dancing because you couldn't see their faces.

In terms of camera angles it was very jumpy. The camera usually followed the characters rather than the editing stage where they use a different camera angles every 1-3 seconds. This is something that occurs in pop videos these days as well.

I believe that this video is not great as it did not make much sense but then it does show who the main characters are and what they are meant to be in a very clever way. I do not think that this video will help much in the production of my video but its has given some advise.