Task 2-Summer Work

3rd Genre and Artist

Pop - Michael Jackson

As the well known 'King of Pop,' Michael Jackson was renowned worldwide for his incredible talent to both sing and dance, with all routines choreographed by himself, his dancing become as iconic as the music of which he was famous for.
With such diversity to his talent, Michael had an equally diverse portfolio of videos to match; from cultural and ethical videos such as 'Earth Song' and 'They Don't Care About Us,' to the suave and sophisticated videos of 'Smooth Criminal,' and 'You Rock My World.'

Props

The extended video of 'Smooth Criminal' was made in light of Michael Jackson's feature film titled 'Moonwalker,' which provides a more extensive view of the props used within the video.  The video overall is very elaborate which fits nicely with the time of which it is set.

Costume

To capture these images adequately, all aspects of costumes and props were tailored to fit the videos. As an example, in the video to 'Smooth Criminal,' the aptly created set involved 1950's-style 'Gangster' clothing to re-inforce the nature of the song, set in a typical dark and smokey bar full of villainous looking characters.

Video Analysis and Representation

At the start of the video, Michael Jackson enters into the scene and immediately the viewers attention is cast upon him due to the angle of the camera, capturing his whole body and suave clothing. He is wearing a black suit with an orange shirt and a black hat. His suit trousers are shortened and his white socks are visible, an iconic image seen within many of Jackson's videos.
Michael's clothing in this shot reflects the diversity of his music and this new adaption of pop, due to the unusual style that he presents.

 In this shot, Michael Jackson is captured dancing, which was a usual occurrence for him in the majority of his videos. It reflects the rawness of his music, and the down to earth, realism of his musical ideas and passions. It also show cases his talent as a dancer as well as a singer, giving him a performing status, which was very important to him and his pop genre. The camera is looking up at him, with a low angle shot, this makes Michael look larger on stage and really emphasises his talent.

In this scene, Michael Jackson has just flirted with the female at the bar and taken her behind this red screen. It is obvious to the viewer what his intentions are, however the use of the editing technique of the red screen, makes the shot more secretive and represents Jackson as a bit of a lady's man, marketing not only this particular song, but Jackson as an overall artist. He is seen to be charming and flirtatious, this is the image he wants to portray in his videos as it fits with his cool, and sophisticated style of pop.