Research and Analysis - Robin Thicke - Blurred lines

Robin Thicke - Blurred lines ft T.I. & Pharrell 

Mise en scene

Blurred Lines by laura_jobowler on GoAnimate



The location is the same throughout the whole music video, the cuts between each shot just introduce a new prop or cut between the different artists, depending on who is singing. The location is what seems to be just infront of a pale coloured wall, and the women and artists just dance around and play around with the props. This is a good idea for the location, as the main focus is on the women and artists rather than where the music video is set. It also means that more can be going on within the frame than if set in a busy location such as a city centre or in a location such as a nightclub. 

The props and the way the females as well as the males are dressed throughout support the theory of Dyer. Dyer says 'In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music stars'  Stars fit in to two key paradoxes, paradox 1 is that the star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer. This music fits into this paradox, as the two of the males are dressed in an ordinary plain suit, where as Pharrell is dressed in a metallic silver suit, this is the extraordinary part to the males. The females are also dressed extraordinary, as it is not typical that woman within music videos to be dressed in see through suits. However the woman are also ordinary as they have little make-up on which makes them look natural.  The props used within the music video are also extraordinary yet ordinary. The props such as the alcohol watches and  cigarettes are ordinary, where as the taxidermy animals are the extraordinary. These aspects to the music video also link in with the two-step-flow. This is because when one person see's the video, due to the extraordinary parts to the stars, they are likely to tell others about the video. If the person respects the other persons opinion, they are likely to be affected by what they say and therefore view the video for themselves. 

Camera

Throughout the video, the camera stays in once place, and the characters dance around the one location. Throughout the Blurred Lines video, the majority of camera angles are either close up or mid shot. 

 Close ups: Quite a lot of the close up shots are used to show the women within the video. A lot of these close up focus on either their face which mainly showed a bored expression, and often rolling their eyes. This shows the audience that they are not impressed with the way the men within the video are acting. Which is ironic, as the lyrics imply that the men are irresistible to the women. The close ups also focus in on the women's bodies, for example one shot is focused on one of the women's torso as she walks      towards the camera. Meaning audiences view her as an object rather than a person. When the close ups are of the men within the music video, they are often surrounded by females, or looking at a female as she walks past them. This can be seen as being degrading towards women, as the men are treating them as objects rather than people. Within the track there is pharrell sings 'Waho' every five seconds, a number of close up shows Pharrell actually doing this as he dances around 
with the Robin Thicke, T.I and the women. Other close ups are also used to show the men singing, as they sing the men are often shown to be looking at the other men, and carrying out actions such as brushing their hair, dancing with the women, smoking and drinking.                                                                  

Mid Shots: The mid shots are used within this music video to show the men dancing as the women strut and move round the men with props in a seductive manor. This once again presenting women as an object.The mid shots also allow the audience to see that the women are wearing revealing white and transparent clothing, which once again, presents the women as sexual objects. However, these mid shots do allow the audience to see the fun aspect of the music video, as all the characters within the video are dancing round in a silly way, and messing around with props. The mid shots allow the audience to see the characters facial expressions as well as their body language, which throughout the video is relaxed and open, showing the audience that nothing is being taken to seriously, which takes the view away from what people might see as a degrading music video. 

Editing

The edit between each shot is a straight cut. This works well the up beat tempo of the track. Because the location is kept the same throughout the whole of the track, the straight cut just cuts to different characters and different angles, for example at the start of the video there is a straight cut from a close up of Robin Thicke lying down with one of the girls, to a long shot all the artists and men lined up again the wall dancing. Throughout the music video text has been edited into the video of hash tags, These hash tags include #Thicke and #Blurredlines. These Hash tags are used on the social networking site Twitter. The hash tags will allow people to join in on each others conversations about the video. This is a good promotional technique for the track as it will publicise the track world wide within a matter of minutes, and it is a free way of marketing the track. 

Sound

The structure of the track is

• Intro 
• Verse
• Pre-Chorus
• Chorus
• verse
• Pre-Chorus
• Chorus 
•  Verse
• Bridge
• Pre-Chorus
• Chorus
• Outro

As well as the lyrics being sung there is a part of the track where one of the girls meows into the camera, as well as seeing her do this, the audience also hear it. Apart from this there is no additional dialogue or sound being added into the track.