Music Video Research: Case Study

CASE STUDY

James Blunt - You're Beautiful



I now need to take a very good look at an example of the kind of music video we need to create. This is the music video for the song "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. The song was released in May 2005, along with this video. It is purely performance based, and, interestingly, it is all performed in one continuous shot. We wouldn't necessarily do the same for our music video, but it is interesting to look at. The camera work is very interesting in this video. It features very slow movements and even slower zooms in and out. The editing is also interesting, since the footage is slowed down, but still kept in time with the music.

The performance is very impressive from Blunt. It shows dedication to the cause, as obviously it would be very uncomfortable in the conditions he was in. He is also an impressively talented actor, because this wasn't an everyday situation.

I found this making of video on the video sharing site Youtube:


The main problem in making this video seemed to be with the subject himself. He not only needed to be looked after carefully while on set, but also needed to be trained beforehand. This kind of meticulous planning is very professional and I thought perhaps we could look at repeating something similar in our video. Obviously the participants would need to be pre-trained (i.e. they would need to be able to play the instruments they were using). I think we would need to look at making sure they can play our song specifically to confirm that our video would look as real as possible. As in this video, the safety of our participants would also be paramount. In the video above, they were concerned about the participant becoming ill due to the extreme conditions he was performing in. When we film our video we will have a lot of electrical and trailing cables, etc. Obviously, these produce fire and tripping hazards, so we need to be extremely careful. If anybody was injured whilst performing for us it could be catastrophic.

Another problem the makers of the video seem to have is a location. They seem to have searched very thoroughly, which is impressively professional. We should look to have similar dedication whilst choosing our location. The location was one of our problems last time as well, so this time we need to make sure the location is 100% suitable.