The genre for plan B’s song and music video is a mixture of pop and soul where as the artist himself is known to be more soul and jazz genre, the change of genre in the music video could be to show a different side to the performer. The music video has a typical narrative of a happy could who one is a performer (Plan b/ Strickland Banks) who ends up going out with some friends and has a one night stand with a girl while his girlfriend or wife is home making dinner and dressing up for him. The expectations for the video are that there will be shorts of the artist and a narrative as the series of videos from the album link together to create one long storyline. The unexpected part of the music video is that there is no attempt to repair the disruption to the equilibrium of the storyline.
The basic storyline is that Strickland Banks cheats on his wife while she is at home cooking his dinner for her. The major theme of this is relationships and there is a recognisable structure. We have equilibrium with the man and wife/girlfriend all happy and content, then a disruption of the one night stand and then the recognition of when the wife/girlfriend slams the phone down and is crying. In the music video we have an antagonist shown as Strickland Banks who is also shown as a false hero due to the one night stand, an antagonist who the ‘other woman’ is also shown as the villain and then the princess who is Strickland’s wife / girlfriend.
‘We’ll be no more’ is a lyric in the song which reflects the music video as it is telling the audience that the characters in the music video are aware of their situation and argument. ‘Only end in tears’ also help to support this theory and the whole song in general reflect about how the relationship wasn’t strong in the first place. The song title is also an intertextual reference to Stevie wonder’s song ‘Superstition’
The representation of gender is shown in the music video as you see a woman spending most of her screen time in the video dressing herself up and cooking in the kitchen where as the male protagonist in the video is shown working and performing, showing the stereotypical views on men and women. The artist of the song is shown as a celebrity in the music video; this is most likely to help promote the song and the artist to make the audience think that he is bigger than he actually is. This is shown at the beginning where the character of Strickland Banks’ name is up on a sign saying his performance is sold out, telling the audience he is a big star.
The video is set in a night club and at a house, from the mise en scene in the video I would say that the video is set in around the 1970’s era due to the house decor and type of microphone that Strickland Banks was using. The dominant lighting was low key on the male to connote a sinister atmosphere and a high key light on his wife / girlfriend to connote innocence and purity. This gives a great contrast which also tells the viewer that they are not suited for each other and helps portray the message of a broken relationship. The most memorable shot was when the woman was preparing food by putting an egg yolk on some meat. This has connotations of a last meal as a couple and another shot of the completed meal where the woman was lighting black candles; this has connotations of death in the relationship.
The editing of the music video was fast paced and it kept up with the pace of the music, a lot of the camera shots were moving shots from behind Strickland Banks to show a point of view shot as if the audience are a part of his entourage. There were many close ups on the characters and close-ups of instruments and the artist when singing. We also saw a long shot of the woman being burnt by a pan which symbolizes being burned by the relationship.
The demographic for the music video would be in class E and D whereas the target audience would be for couples, fans of the artist and genre, and girls from the age of fourteen to early twenties. It targets this specific audience as the artist is smartly dressed in a suit which is considered very attractive and would most likely attract a female audience. The characters in the music video can also be a connection between the audiences as some may have gone through the same experiences as the characters shown.
The record company, 679 Warner Music Group, have used the music video to promote the album and music along with Plan B’s alter ego, Strickland Banks which is also helping to promote Plan B in a more glorified way.
The reason we looked at this video is to show how the lyrics have a certain meaning, when we create our own music video we will plan enough so that we could get the same amount of textual analysis that we can discovered in this music video. looking at a different genre of music than our own will enable us to see the generic conventions of the genre and look for similarities and differences between them, showing what we could use to influence or own video.
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