Costumes in music videos are used as much to tell a story as settings I feel, if a video has different cuts and time jumps, the costumes can help keep these ordered and making sense, costume is a very important part in stories and also getting across the message behind the song and video, in the music video for '23' by Wiz Khalifa and Miley Cyrus the entire video is based on a brand of shoes, this will create a hype with the audience over these shoes and everyone will want to be seen in them.
Costume in music videos can also enhance the setting, for example, Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' has elegant, large castles and beautiful backdrops, but the old fashioned costumes like the corset dresses, the curled hair and the man's lose fitting suit with boots really show the time period that the video was trying to create to go along side the Romeo and Juliet themed song.
Another important use of costume in music videos, is to create an identity for the artist. In Gerri Halliwell's 'It's Raining Men' the singer wore very little, tight clothing to show off her new physique after losing weight, Miley Cyrus used her outfit choices to represent that she is not Hannah Montana any more and that she is a grown up woman with a very sexualised personality and she shows this through her clothing. This kind of choice appeals to mainly the younger generation, probably teens and young adults as these will be fans of Miley and they will admire her confidence and want to dress like Miley. These clothes also appeal to males as explained in the Male Gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, showing how women dress and act in a certain way to appeal to men.
This also applies to the opposite gender, Justin Bieber has recently been releasing more mature songs with videos to match, the provocative video for 'What Do You Mean' with Justin showing off his toned body while getting steamy with his also under dressed co star have caught the eyes of many teens and young adults of all genders, wanting to be them or be with them.
How this research has influenced my planning
This research has really opened my eyes to just how important costumes are in a music video, this has helped me decide that the costumes really need to represent the genre of our chosen song, but also make sense to the story line while creating a star image for our actors and telling the story. We don't want overly extravagant costumes so nothing like these shown above but just simple jeans and vintage shirts etc.
A good post. Remove the question number, this is a Research post.
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How this research has influenced my planning and creativity.