Music Video 1: “Roar” by Katy Perry

The genre of this music video is pop, and it is trying to appeal to an audience of both males and females. It uses a lot of the technical conventions of mainstream pop music videos.

The video focuses mostly on the main singer, so there are a lot of close-ups and zooms focused on her. As is the case for most music videos featuring a woman, voyeurism is used quite often, likely to appeal to the male audience who may be watching. However, this video uses a less common technical convention in the form of animation – this is used briefly, and fades into live-action footage.

This particular music video is based around the narrative of a woman becoming strong in a jungle – at the start of the video, she is afraid of everything, but at the end, she becomes stronger than any of the animals. This narrative is based around the lyrics, which mention animals and roaring.

Unusually for music videos, this video presents the man that features in it as weak and useless, and the woman as strong (although she does start off weaker than the man). This gives the message that women are strong, which would definitely appeal to a female audience. However, the video still presents the woman in a light of sexualisation, as she progressively wears less clothes as the video goes on – while this is linked to her strength in that she is getting “wilder”, it is still clearly meant to be sexual as well, to appeal to the male audience.

There is some intertextuality used in this video, mostly just how it looks. It is very likely to be referencing films like Tarzan, because of the jungle setting and how some parts of it are animated like some versions of the film were. It is also referencing Indiana Jones, because of the font that it uses for titles, and again because of the setting. These references are intended to amuse the audience, and entertain them.

As previously mentioned, the visuals match with the lyrics, and at times, they match up with them exactly. One time that this happens is when the lyrics say “roar” while the woman is shown roaring. This was done so that the visuals emphasise the lyrics and give them more impact.

Music Video 2: “Money for Nothing” by The Dire Straits

This music video is of the rock genre, and its most likely target audience is males. It uses some of the technical conventions of rock music videos, but also uses some more unique conventions.

This video is entirely animated with computer graphics (it was the first music video to be like this), though it does use some live-action footage on the television screens that appear in it. The animation makes it stand out from other music videos, and possibly appeal to fans of animation. The live-action footage follows the standard genre conventions – like with most rock music videos, it has a lot of performance shots and close-ups on the band. Some parts are monochrome, which also helps the video to stand out from others.

This video is based somewhat on a narrative, featuring a man who works at what appears to be a factory, with microwaves and refrigerators. He watches different music videos in the video, and this “music video within a music video” also helps the video to be unique. The narrative is based on the lyrics, which mention MTV, microwaves and refrigerators. The men in this music video are shown as workers, which is a fairly stereotypical representation of males. In the live-action footage, there is some voyeurism, and this is the only part with women in it. Therefore, the representation of women in this video is that they are sexualised.

This video uses some very obvious intertextuality – the lyrics explicitly mention the MTV music channel, and the television screens shown in the video feature footage from the MTV channel, complete with its logo. This is likely intended to be amusing for the audience, and possibly to poke fun at MTV.

The visuals closely match up with the lyrics. When the lyrics mention MTV, footage from MTV is shown, and when they mention microwaves and refrigerators, these items are shown. The video is essentially exactly what the lyrics are talking about, which makes it more effective as a music video.