Group Research post: Costume

Costumes in music videos are used as much to tell a story as settings I feel, if a video has different cuts and time jumps, the costumes can help keep these ordered and making sense, costume is a very important part in stories and also getting across the message behind the song and video, in the music video for '23' by Wiz Khalifa and Miley Cyrus the entire video is based on a brand of shoes, this will create a hype with the audience over these shoes and everyone will want to be seen in them.

Costume in music videos can also enhance the setting, for example, Taylor Swift's 'Love Story' has elegant, large castles and beautiful backdrops, but the old fashioned costumes like the corset dresses, the curled hair and the man's lose fitting suit with boots really show the time period that the video was trying to create to go along side the Romeo and Juliet themed song.

Another important use of costume in music videos, is to create an identity for the artist. In Gerri Halliwell's 'It's Raining Men' the singer wore very little, tight clothing to show off her new physique after losing weight, Miley Cyrus used her outfit choices to represent that she is not Hannah Montana any more and that she is a grown up woman with a very sexualised personality and she shows this through her clothing. This kind of choice appeals to mainly the younger generation, probably teens and young adults as these will be fans of Miley and they will admire her confidence and want to dress like Miley. These clothes also appeal to males as explained in the Male Gaze theory by Laura Mulvey, showing how women dress and act in a certain way to appeal to men.



This also applies to the opposite gender, Justin Bieber has recently been releasing more mature songs with videos to match, the provocative video for 'What Do You Mean' with Justin showing off his toned body while getting steamy with his also under dressed co star have caught the eyes of many teens and young adults of all genders, wanting to be them or be with them.


How this research has influenced my planning
This research has really opened my eyes to just how important costumes are in a music video, this has helped me decide that the costumes really need to represent the genre of our chosen song, but also make sense to the story line while creating a star image for our actors and telling the story. We don't want overly extravagant costumes so nothing like these shown above but just simple jeans and vintage shirts etc.

I agree fully with what Caity has said about the use of costumes in music videos, they are a very useful tool to establish a star's image for example if we dress a new star in ripped jeans and a stripy jumper with longer hair we know that they aren't going to be singing pop and instead will be singing rock or indie music. Costume is a very important tool in music video and must be used well!.

The saying "Dont judge a book by its cover" comes to mind only for the fact we have to in music video's, from what a star wear's, their make up and their hair we can judge and understand their character and what they are trying to represent entirely.

How this has influenced my planning
  This influenced my planning as it made me aware about how important a costume is when it comes producing a music video, I think one thing I need to start doing now is to plan the costumes on what I want people to wear . As costumes can be an important tool in communicating who they are right away