I have chosen to analyse the music video "California Gurls" by Katy Perry. The genre is disco-pop and funk-pop with influences of new wave and electro pop. The video was released on 7th May 2010 after clips from Katy's album Teenage Dream was leaked online. Due to this event it was then released to iTunes on the 11th. The song was a worldwide success, reaching number one on the billboard hot 100 and remaining there for six consecutive weeks. The music video was later on released on June 15th 2010.
Snoop Dogg, a former rapper features in verses throughout the song. While both artists co-wrote the song with Bonnie McKee and its co-producers Dr.Luke and Max Martin. Katy claims that the inspiration behind the video was an artist named Will Cotton who was also the artists director of the video. The video shows many other influences such as Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the board game Candyland. This is known as intertextual references.
The purpose of this music video is to entertain. The video consists of Katy and her dancers dressed as pieces of a board game. The setting and the props are very intriguing and unique.
The opening shot to the music video is a picture of the front lid of a board game "Candyfornia". This shows Andrew Goodwin's theory of concepts as it is very abstract and different to many other music videos out there. The audience find this interesting as it is something that they have never seen before and is very different. The majority of shots throughout the video are close ups of Katy as she is the main artist. Occasionally the camera shows the other models in the video but only when Katy 'unwraps' them in the video. One of the shots involves Katy laying naked on a cloud in the sky. The camera focuses a lot on her bum and legs - something to attract the male audience. On the other hand various shots of Katy are shown holding props such as high heels and necklaces which will attract the female audience. She also shows shots to attractive a younger audience for example at one point Katy is dressed in a Brownies outfit with her hair in bunches. This could be seen as child-like.
The lighting through-out the video is very strong. The effect of having the lighting so bright is that it reflects on the mood of the video. This is happiness and excitement. I feel that if the lighting was darker a different mood would be set and it would clash with a horror type video.
At this moment in time, Katy Perry was fairly new to the music industry. Due to this, she felt
that she had to be very out there and different to catch the audience's attention - especially when competing with huge artists such as Beyonce or Rihanna. "California Gurls" is very similar to her first single "I kissed a girl" and "Last Friday Night" as all three video shows footage of Katy dressed up in various outfits and wigs. This is called iconography as in all of Katy' video's she wears various wigs in assorted colours.
The lyrics of the song include phrases such as "Laying underneath the palm trees" , "To the golden coast" and "Bikinis on top, sun kissed skin." These phrases would remind you of a sunny beach packed with people having fun. However the music videos says otherwise. Katy quoted "It's not just like, Oh lets go to the beach and throw a party! Its more like let's put us California Gurls in a whole different world!"
In my opinion I really like this video for California Gurls as every time you watch it you notice something new. There is so much going on it could keep you entertained for hours. The video definitely fulfills its purpose and genre. I think that this video will be one of my favourites for a long time.
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