Q&A Dreamworld
What kinds of camera and editing techniques are used in music videos? How do these techniques affect the way you see and react to what you are watching? How do these techniques relate to the concept of gaze?
The music videos that were shown in “Dreamworlds” used techniques that would show close ups of women’s body parts separately which objectified them. Many of the shots shown in the videos were ones that went up a woman’s skirt, or ones of women’s cleavage. There was a common camera angle that shot between the legs of a woman with the action being seen between them. This affects the way I viewed the videos because it made the women not seem like real people. They became just parts of the female body that were sequenced together, usually with a man singing in front of them. Other directors clearly made the women in their videos only as part of the story, or origin of the song. The videos showcased many camera angles that depicted women who were looking at themselves, wanting to be desired, examined, and explored. Women were shown behind bars dancing or under sheets, and even in shadows to make their sex appeal be the main focus of why they were in the music videos. These techniques relate to the concept of gaze by the many scenes they showed of women in the videos looking straight into the camera as if she was being watched. The way the producers wanted these women to come across was that they enjoyed being looked at, and reveled in the attention they received from the men. In the various videos we saw from ‘Dreamworlds” they portrayed women to be nymphos and sex objects.