essay for music video

I have been studying the video fire burning, by Sean Kingston. The Video was premiered at MTV on June 15, 2009. Unlike many of his previous singles, which are all produced by J.R. Rotem, the song is produced by RedOne. The song was used for the opening number of the Miss Universe 2009 live at the Atlantis Paradise Island, Nassau, Bahamas. The song is sung by Sean Kingston and extras singers in the background. It was first released on MySpace to promote the song. When it became very popular it was also released to radio stations and for digital download April 24, 2009. To date the song has been played more than 13 million times on his MySpace page. The song has sold over 1 million downloads.

When watching the video is clear to say this video is pop dance. This is because pop videos usually have a narrative behind the video. The chorus repeats itself making people not forget the lyrics this also has the characteristics of a reggae influenced style too. But it has been mainly defined as pop dance due to upbeat song with a narrative. This video has Sean Kingston dancing around in a nightclub with lots of skinny women with not much clothes on. It starts with him getting out of a flash car in a suit. This is showing his proud of himself and making him the centre of attention. The video is set in a club at night with Sean dancing with all the women.
There is a clear concept that the video has a relationship between the visuals and lyrics. The music is called fire burning on the dance floor and this video relates to this through everyone dancing on the dance floor. When the lyrics are “pop it, lock it…” it shows the women walked into the dance floor with everyone staring at them, showing they become the new centre of attention. Also when it says “dancing on a dance floor” it shows people raving and break dancing in the middle of the dance floor. So the audience understand the narrative behind the words through what is being shown on the video.

Also there is an obvious relationship between the visuals and music. The music of this video is an up-tempo electro pop song with a modern up beat tempo. It is set at the common time with a beat of 120 beats per minute. Throughout the video it is fast paced of the dancers dancing. But the pace and tempo slows down when the women walk in again making them seem more important. The pace of the chorus speeds up to show them having a good time. Also when it says “Now take my red, black card and my jewellery” it shows some more dancers walking in with red hoodies on. This has been come effective because the audience realise that there is a change of mood when the music tempo and beat changes.

All Music videos have to show the star in it to sell them basically. So to do this there must be a number of close up of the star which this video clearly shows. When the women walk in there is a close of Sean Kingston reaction. There are many times when Sean Kingston has a close up of his face and close ups of some of the women in the video, with sometimes close ups of different body parts of the women. Music Videos usually always show women dancing in the video to promote the video usually. It doesn’t matter whatever the genre or video is, there is usually always women dancing with minimal clothes on. The women the men are dancing with seem to be high class in suits and with flash cars. Throughout the video you see lots of women with minimal clothes on in the background dancing to an upbeat song. There are scenes where the women are the centre of attention as the audience prefers this.

I have come to the conclusion that the video is more narrative based as the point of the video is too tell a story which has been show effectively in Sean Kingston’s , fire burning. There video also uses performance based as it shows lots of people dancing throughout the video.