Thursday 19 September 2013

Redundancy & Entropy - Planning

Redundancy is the term used in media to describe anything predictable or conventional, and stretches all the way from photographs to film, television and music videos.
Entropy is the term used in media to describe anything that is out of the ordinary and unexpected. This, again, covers all areas of media.

Redundancy and entropy are employed in different measures in different genres. For example, pop, indie and electro videos tend to be more entropic than those of a rock persuasion, for example. So, going by this, here are a few examples of artists and how high or low their music videos tend to be in entropy or redundancy:

Taylor Swift's videos are almost exclusively presented in a redundant, story-like manner. Her video for '22' depicts her having a party for a birthday with her friends, then later on, lying and playing on a beach with the same group. This, like her other videos, is what society expects from this type of artist/song/genre (indie pop), and is a brilliant example of a redundant artist.

Lady GaGa's videos are the exact opposite. Each one is made to 'wow' the viewer, with entropic themes throughout. Her video for 'Marry The Night', for example, features around eight minutes of narrative at the beginning of the near 14-minute video. This narrative starts with GaGa on a stretcher, with a spiralling close up of her face, which then quickly goes into the camera following the stretcher, pulled by two women. Throughout this scene, she is describing what the nurses are wearing, and why - "their caps are tipped to the side, like Parisian berets, and 

No comments:

Post a Comment