Task 2 - Contemporary Music Video Research

Song - Bodies

Artist - Robbie Williams

Who made the video and where it was filmed:

The video for bodies was directed by Vaughan Anell and the whole video was filmed in the Mojave Desert. A reason why they filmed it all in the desert was because the video featured him riding different vehicals, and it looked really effective riding them through the desert instead of just riding through a city.

When it was released and the amount of copies that it sold in the first week:

The music video had its first premier on September 9th 2009.The single for the song was released after the first premier and it sold 89, 000 copies in the first week. The song was taken from his eighth studio album Reality Killed the Video Star which was released on october 12th 2009.

Who was featured in the video?

The video featured Robbie Williams riding through the desert and it also featured parts of the video with his girlfriend Ayda Field, the reason for this was because it would look good with another person in it rather than just himself and he also wanted to make a video with his girlfriend in it.

How the video was made:

The video was very well made, although the whole video was just filmed in the Mojave Desert it had a lot of good transition overlays, such as multi screens and split screen effects. A reason why they added these overlays was because they wanted to make it a little bit more exciting to watch and it also made the video look really modern, one of the split screen overlays can be found at 2:13 in the video.

How the camera shots were used:

There were a lot of camera shots in the video, there were close ups, extreme close ups and lots of other shots, because it was filmed in the desert it had to have a lot of different shots to make it look more interesting, the intro to the video features alot of different shots and also some moving shots because each beat of the music changes to a different shot as seen at 0:03 in the video.

How the lighting was used:

The lighting was also very important because it was very bright in the desert, they had to control the lighting just right so it would light up the most important things in the video, for example the singer and the vehicles. The reason for this was because the singer and the vehicals were the things that they want you to see the most and this could not happen with just the natural light because the sun would be shining in front of them and the vehicals and you would not beable to see them as clearly.

How the song fits in with the video:

The way in which that the song fits in with the video is mostly by the speed and beat of the song, for example at the beginning of the song it starts with the instrumental introduction and the video starts off with just the cliffs in the desert and it changes camera angles on each beat, then when he starts to sing it go’s straight down to where his standing.

Who the video is aimed at:

Because Robbie Williams has been round since the early 90s, the video is most likely aimed at teenagers and young adults. Another reason why the video is aimed as this sort of target audience is because of the type of music because this is the type of music that these age groups mostly listen to.