Music Video 1 - Miley Cyrus - 7 things

The first video which I will be anaylysing is 7 things by Miley Cyrus, the director of this video is in fact Brett Ratner. There are many ways in which the lyrics link to the visuals within this video, this tends to exaggerate the words that are being said much more, this song has no contradictions between the lyrics and the visuals and simply shows exactly what is being said. There are a few specific examples of this in which I can pull out of the video e.g. "but sometimes I get so scared" - The girls in the video while this is being said are pulling a scared looking facial expression and grab onto their teddys which they hold in their hands. At one point in the video Miley grabs the necklace she has round her neck and kisses it, this quite obviously shows that the song is about a previous lover which she has now lost and are going their seperate ways, the lyrics also communicate this to the audience. There is also another point in the video where the lyrics strongly relate to the visuals, "you make me love you" - A girl in the video has a teddy bear in her hands with the word "love" written across it, she then drops it as these words are being sung. "If you text it I'll delete it" - One of the girls in the video is holding a phone, deleting a message. Throughout the song is negative with Miley singing about the 7 things she hates about her ex, and the video is very negative, the visuals are of all of the girls crying and being upset, whereas when Miley starts singing about the 7 things she likes about her ex, the girls start smiling and becoming happier.
There is a strong relationship between the music and the visuals in this video, the song starts off quite low and the beat isn't very fast and the song in itself is rather quiet, this visuals link into this as everyone in the video is calm and aren't moving much, just tapping their feet to the beat etc. Although when the beat and music starts picking up at "The 7 things I hate about you" everyone in the background starts getting into the music and dancing and becoming more into everything that is going on, the same can also be said for the pace of the music along with the visuals, when the pace fastens up, so do the visuals and the people in the video.
I believe the record company are looking to sell this track with attracting a younger audience. Although they have stripped the image of "Hannah Montana" in which Miley plays in the Disney Channel series, they are still keeping her innocence and personality, just without the costume and blonde hair, they understand and realise that children will still love Miley whether shes Hannah or not. They show Mileys innocence through using other normal teenage girls in the video holding teddy bears and crying because they have lost something they wanted to hold onto. The song is a simple representation of how teenagers percieve relationships and break-ups. They have also shown Miley wearing the necklace that her ex boyfriend Nick Jonas brought her, many children will realise this and they have seen this as an attempt to publicly show the fact that Miley was hurt through this break-up, this is in fact a story in itself. There are many close-ups of Miley throughout this video, in fact, throughout the whole video it's pretty much her face on screen with a few background band players and the girls that come on throughout the videos, this shows that Miley is the main part of the video and gives her importatance and draws in the audiences attention. Before this video, Miley had never made a song or a video as just Miley, it'd just been as Hannah Montana! so this video was very important in showing the audience that she now wants to show a new side to her and show a more mature side to her, although still keeping the same target audience plus also a slightly older audience included. So their were no videos made before this that were in any way the same as this video. There are some videos that were made after 7 things which do link to the "7 things" video such as "Fly on the wall" Miley is showing a more harsh side to her in this video although still keeping the same image and keeping the spot light on Miley, this all represents a huge change of image.
As the artist is trying to keep an innocent and child-like look in this video there are no ways at all that the artists or any of the people in the video are being put on sexual display, the idea of the video is for young children to idolise Miley. The whole video is based around showing that altough Miley is this massive huge star that everyone adores, she still has feelings and still gets hurt just like every other child/teenager. All of the props and costumes that are used are very child-like and would target a very young audience and these things would appeal to children e.g. teddy bears, phones, colourfull outfits, a white rose (again showing innocence) and so on. The necklace within the peice is hugely significant and represents the video all together. It shows that although Miley has all this money, a small necklace means more to her then any of that.
Like I said previously, Miley has totally stripped her Hannah Montana image in this video, although still shows the same, quirky Hannah just without the costume or blonde hair. It seperates her from her TV show massively and has created a new person within the video and shows that Miley can be more than just Hannah, and can still be successfull without Hannah.
I would say that the video is narrative-based, as throughout they are telling us Mileys story and why she is singing this song. The video is actually based on her real life heartbreak and as an audience we can get the idea that she is hurt within the video, they want us to know the story and what has happened.
To conclude discussing this video I have gathered a lot of evidence which shows what this video is about and what its main idea is and what it would like to put across to us as an audience. The genre of the song is pop-rock. This video was mainly created to show Miley without Hannah and to show how successfull she can be without her. The idea was to create a sense of innocence without taking it too far, and also to target a wider audience. As Miley children and teens may be interested whereas as just Hannah she would only attract young children.