Question 1

In our music video, we intended to draw attention to important aspects of people’s lives, which they would usually ignore. Our music video was inspired by the original concept created from Michael Jackson’s version of ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ by shooting extreme poverty in the streets of brazil, including a black civil rights campaign ‘Olodum’ and the energy of the aggressive performance from Michael Jackson himself. Our video was also inspired by other Michael Jackson songs and videos with the same purpose, such as ‘Bad’, ‘Human Nature’ and ‘Beat It’. We intended to address the same concept in our music video by similarly using an aggressive theme to the performance included in the singing and dancing, and using footage of former president of the United States: Franklin Delano Roosevelt as well as the black civil rights movement: Martin Luther King Jr. However we also wanted to capture the attention of the audience we would most likely attract by filming homeless people, cold, and begging in the dark which relates to the intention of the video, filming the performer singing and dancing in dark scenes around the Castlefield area located in Manchester, and shooting in remote areas which like the black and white effect in our video, connotes a dark and dull theme to the video. The originality of our music video comes from the dance style and the performance, as the guitar solo is the most powerful part of the video as this is when the performer expresses the meaning of the song using dance moves from the original video which is also included towards the end of the song. These ideas have been adopted from other Michael Jackson music videos previously mentioned in the blog as each video has a specific dance theme related to the genre of the music video, the lyrics, and time zone as Michael Jackson has a different dance theme for each video such as the difference between the image portrayed from the dance moves from ‘Billie Jean’, to the dance moves from ‘Bad’, as the dancing in both videos was an expression of the meaning to the song. Our music video broke the usual conventions of a music video from a similar genre as rather than using imagery to portray the meaning of the song, our performance was a key source in sending the message to our viewers by limiting the effects we would add to the music video. The video also breaks the conventions as the performance enhances the narrative of the song by building up the emotions of the viewers which are expressed through the dancing scenes in the song. The overall intention of our music video production is to create a more modern outlook to the current issues often raised in today’s society as the video relates to the problems, which the video addresses who is responsible for these problems and who’s actions have impacted on the world today in a negative or positive light in terms of the situations that commonly occur in today’s world.