Codes and Conventions of

Love Ballads and how we will apply

them to our Project

Themes

• Generally in Love Ballads, there is a narrative as this tends to be more popular with the viewers as they are able to connect and relate. If the song is about a story of how two people met and fell in love, it is more than likely that the video will reflect this, often quite literally.

• Most love ballads do play out perfect love situations, which tend to be quite surreal as this idea of perfection isn’t very realistic, but they set it out like this so it appeals to the viewer who would be able to imagine that the character in the story is them.

Our Project

• We have decided that for our narrative, we will have a love story between Holly and Sam as this will appeal to the target audience we are aiming at. Also, we followed the lyrics quite literally as this is how Holly wanted it to be and we believe the artist should have a say in what they would like in their own music video.

• The love scene is quite surreal, picturesque surroundings and falling in love at first sight but we think our audience will appreciate this and enjoy watching the music video.

Lighting

• Lighting is important in love stories as the right lighting sets the right atmosphere. There will be a lot of soft illumination as this tends to cast shadows with soft edges. To get the right kind of lighting, two things have to be taken into consideration, the distance from the light source – the closer it is, the softer the light and, the size of the light source – the larger it is, the softer the light. It is also important to make the lighting look natural.

Our Project

• We have decided that for the performance scene, we will use three-point lighting in front of a greenscreen. We think it is important that the music video looks as professional as possible. We want to position the lights right so that there will only be soft shadows on her face and no shadow behind of her body.

• We also will take into consideration in the narrative scene, the importance of the light looking natural. It will be filmed in a scenic place and we want it to look as normal as possible.

Editing

• Soft and subtle editing and transitions mainly are used to indicate the state of the relationship in the video that everything goes smoothly. It also relaxes the viewer because they can tell by the editing that the video will be dreamy and slow so nothing bad will happen. This kind of editing also is very romantic and idealistic.

Our Project

• We plan for our editing to be smooth and flowing, only changing on the 3 guitar beats at the end to create a dynamic peak in the scenario.

• We will use many soft transitions between clips for added emphasis on the ‘perfect’ love story.