Influences of Style

Beyonce

Beyonce’s current album “I am Sasha Fierce” is a major influence for our music video, as Beyonce’s music videos for “If I were a boy”, “Single Ladies”, “Sweet Dreams”, and “Broken-Hearted girl” all contain a black and white effect. The black and white is particularly effective due to the fact that it gives a video a narrative based feel due to the meaning the lack of colours give, which is usually a negative or deep emotion.

“If I were a boy”:

The black and white colour scheme is used successfully in this video as it emphasises the breakdown of the relationship between Beyonce’s character and the man who plays her boyfriend. Therefore the video influenced us by giving the idea of using black and white to express a problematic relationship either a romantic relationship or friendship etc.

“Single Ladies”:

The video for “Single Ladies” was also very influential from its style, as it showed how the black and white effect can be used in an up-tempo beat. The mixture of the lack of colours and staging places focus on the choreographed dance moves.

“Sweet Dreams”:

Beyonce’s next music video for “Sweet Dreams” uses mixtures of styles through using black and white schemes and then using normal colours. Furthermore, during a black and white scene a filter is used to expose the gold colour, the video gave us ideas of using a mixture of normal and black and white background to reveal the narrative and performance parts of the video. We could use the filter idea to show certain colours of objects which can be used to further explain the narrative such as the significance of the object or what the colour suggests in terms of emotions.

“Broken-Hearted girl”:

For “Broken-Hearted girl” we particularly liked the narrative as it was emotive and was reflective of the meaning of the song. The song like traditional Beyonce songs used black and white and a mixture of natural colouring. The song as an effective ending, in which reverse action is used and the rose Beyonce tore apart comes together again, this is very effective and we want to use this style in our music video.