Music Video Analysis: Redundancy and Entropy

Redundancy is a word used to describe something you would expect. Whether it fits a certain genre or whether they are normal everyday things. For example a photograph of a normal cat.







Entropy is the unexpected. Things that catch your eye because they are weird or represented in a different way. For example a cat amongst some meerkats, its something you would be surprised if you saw and wouldn't see very often.
Lady Gaga ft Beyonce-Telephone

For this music video I will be analyzing the redundant and entropic features of the video.


Redundancy:
At the beginning of the video you can immediatly tell that the setting is at a prison, this is shown by the dark and depressing colours, and the barbed wire that surrounds the buildings.

A quite normal thing in prison is also for the women to be quite butch, and as this print screen shows women doing weights, it seems like a pretty normal scene for a prison

For this pop genre of music a dance routine is pretty standard. As shown in the video dance routines are a big part of it, along with the tight and revealing clothing. This part of the video is also very performance based, another characteristic of the pop genre.

In the second part of the video there is a setting in an American diner, this scene is very typical of America, and what you would imagine if you were to go there.

Entropy:

 

In the opening scenes of the video there is typography that introduces the video, this has a film style effect as if they are the credits of a film. This is also reflected in the abnormally long video time of nearly 10 minutes. Along with this there isnt any music for a long time.

At the start of the video when you first see Lady Gaga, she is arm in arm with two prison guards, the outfits that these guards are wearing are very unexpected, they are very sexy and revealing, and this is the same with the prisoners.

Carrying on the theme of the unconventional prisoners, a lot of them have expensive and branded outfits and accesories, they also have mobile phones and are wearing a lot of glamour makeup. This screen shot here is also an example of ironic product placement, a mid shot that is shown for too long to be proper product placement.

Throughout the video the location drastically switches which is another abnormal thing to be in a music video. From a prison it changes to a car journey featuring Beyonce, then onto an american diner and a kitchen.