1.

Sean Kingston beautiful girls jay-z Ft Mr Hudson Forever Young R Kelly Ignition Beyonce Single ladies Rihanna Diamonds K-koke FT Rita Ora Lay down Your Weapons All the songs belong to the R&B genre and have similar characteristics such as: Girls with revealing clothes which do not necessarily need to be in the video but they are there anyway. Some of the videos show the artists having lots of money, such as Sean Kingstons car and R Kelly being shown getting out of a limo wearing a large fur coat; he is also shown pouring champagne away. All the music videos listed above show the main artist performing in the video at one point or another. 2. The videos often have a link between the lyrics and visuals. An example of this is at 0.51-0.55 in the Sean Kingston song where the lyric When you took my heart At this point in the video, the artist is shown looking across a room full of people, at a girl who is looking back and smiling at him. This is a common characteristic to have in an R&B music video as it shows the person who the artist is singing about. An anomaly of this is Rihannas song as the visuals do not relate to the lyrics in any way. There are some clips which have relevance such as the chorus repeating Shine bright like a diamond, at this point Rihannas hand is shown in diamonds. Denis McQuail argues that all media follows a criteria. In this case, the audience would expect the music videos to be relevant to the lyrics which are apparent in the video. 3. The videos we analysed all cut to the beat. The reason for this is just so the visuals illustrate the song better. If the video didnt cut to the beat, it would look out of place. Instrumental bits illustrated by the video are not relevant to this genre as it is more performance based. When the music slowed down the pace of the video slowed down. As these videos all illustrate the song which they accompany, they follow certain conventions therefore Gunter Kresss theory is relevant as he says that all music videos follow a pattern or template based on the genre.

4. There was often close-ups shown in the videos, this showed the emotions of the artist and focuses the audiences attention on the artist. An example of facial emotion on an artists face is Mr Hudson as 1.19, he is performing the song without a smile or an emotion, this is opposite to Sean Kingston whos smiles throughout. All the videos showed the typical style of the artist. 5. We noticed that in the videos we looked at, there is a lot of people who look as if they are on sexual display. For example, Beyonce is wearing revealing clothes and is dancing in the centre of the screen, showing that she is the main attraction of the video. This theme is continued in the r Kelly video, where the artist is shown in a crowd of girls who are dancing around him. This shows voyuerism as they are only there to be watched, they do not have an impact on the song itself but yet are main attractions in the video. As mentioned before, costumes in the video are revealing when it comes to women. This shows that the audience are taking a male approach to viewing. In comparison to older R&B videos from 20 years ago, not many women would have been shown wearing revealing clothes, however it is seen as more acceptable in modern day media, this shows how genres change and evolve, this supports Andrew Goodwins theory of genre. 6. Intertextual references are not conventional for this genre of music, however there is a small link between Sean Kingstons song and another song performed by Ben E. King. There is a clip which shows an old school band on a black and white TV, performing the song which Sean Kingston is singing. At the same time, the instrumental changes to what sounds like Ben E. Kings song Stand By Me, and the visuals for the song on a black and white TV with a band behind him. This is a slight intertextual link between two songs from two very different times. This supports Katie Wales genre theory as she says that all music videos of the same genre would have intertextual links. 7. Mostly, the videos are performance based, however, there is a small narrative story in most of the videos. This is used to help the audience understand the story of the song. An example of a narrative based video would be the Lay Down Your Weapons video; the narrative consists of an actor walking through a prison, this narrates the song as

the lyrics include relations to prison etc. The other videos we analysed were mainly performance based as they showed the artist performing the song; this was the case with Beyonces video as she is shown in the centre of the screen for the majority of the video.