Ellie Goulding - Lights (Codes and Conventions)

We recently got some feedback on our documentary and found that our weak spot was the content of our codes and conventions for editing. Therefore we decided to choose three music videos and analyse the codes and conventions in more depth!

2. Ellie Goulding - Lights

In contrast to Madonna’s vogue video, Ellie Goulding’s
lights is filmed using extreme bright colours. This is something that is very
popular in the female pop artist industry as bright colours are memorable and
eye catching. Another technique used within this video is the 360 panning shot,
where we as an audience see every possible angle of our artist, which is
another way of showing the star theory. The entire video is orientated around
Ellie herself, watching her perform with drums and a microphone. Unlike
Madonna, there is no narrative to this video which emphasises how desperate the
artist wants to make her identity known, like most female artists. Although 30
years later, there are actually many similarities between the two videos, the
proxemics are very similar, in terms of the artist being in the centre of the
shot at all times, showing her importance. Both females wear revealing clothes,
and change outfits a lot, showing they can essentially pull off anything. Also,
the pace of shots is very similar, quick yet in time to the music so the music
and video link. The editing on Goulding’s video is extremely technical. As the
song is about ‘Lights’ there are many freeze frames of Ellie posed in different
positions with the camera still rotating around her 360. Along with this, the
editor has put several effects onto the shot with different lighting patterns
in different colours. This shows how technology has changed since Madonna’s
era, but the fundamental video has very similar techniques and overall feel to
it.