Music Videos in the post-cinema era: How Billie Eilish as a “savage” made the songs more beautiful

By Leyan Zhang, 33734844

Please play this song

before reading the article

Digital technology has changed the relationship between audiences and audiovisual media, and platforms such as YouTube have redefined the production, dissemination and consumption of moving images. We are accustomed to the conveniences that technology brings to us. Perhaps we are spoiled and have returned to Plato’s cave. This time is different. This time we are no longer savage people, but have profound modern life, the experienced people. We love music, and we enjoy the edification and happiness that art brings to us. Ability and willingness to feel the flow of emotions in media. The addition of personalized platforms such as YouTube makes us both viewers and producers. As a result, we, the original savages in the cave, have become the gods who created our own cave as we hope to have more space. The cave is no longer a space that confines us, it can be our quasi-private spaces (Casetti, F., 2015).

In this cave, we like to listen to some of our favorite music. Does the combination of technology and images make it more beautiful? Look how she does it!

The perfectly matched camera performance and just the right technology allowed complex musical instruments to be carefully arranged into this video, which greatly reflected Billie Eilish’s personal charm. She is able to do this.” We can assume there are issues of dominance and subservience, passivity and aggression. In music-image relations, one medium often seems to be pushing the other to do something, acting as the driver.( Vernallis, C., 2013, p210).

Billie Eilish’s development as a personal singer-songwriter is combined with the theory of scholar Casetti. In the world of YouTube, the relationship between “savages” and the media is dynamic. In her updated concept of Assemblage, the audience is no longer a waiter of Cinematic Apparatus Theory. Enter the whiteboard, a stationary device. Rather, he is a person with a dynamic identity and his own thoughts who can explore different visual expressions and notes according to his own preferences (Casetti, F., 2015). Interestingly, in the past, music videos were just advertisements for music, a means for composers and singers to gain more exposure. Now, because of the Internet, learning technology is no longer difficult. Everyone can be a singer and creator. Or if your ambition is in audiovisual media, you can also learn to become a producer or even director.

In general, the addition of the music video makes the song give us a more novel feeling and create a more real feeling. In the contemporary accelerated time and space like Inception, our impatient life needs a pause button. The mixture of music and videos that make our wishes come true and we are truly treated like God, the You Tube platform allows us to watch and create as we please, like God.

#week6 #week7 #week8 #youtube #billieeilish #quasi-private spaces# Assemblage

Author:

Leyan Zhang, 33734844

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References

BillieEilishVEVO (2024). Billie Eilish – BIRDS OF A FEATHER (Official Music Video). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9PVRfjEBTI.

Casetti, F. (2015). The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Key Words for the Cinema to Come. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/case17242

Vernallis, C. (2013) Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199322176.