BEYONCE

Case study one – Beyoncé mtv vma 2014 performance

 

Coverage of action:

The producers have covered the event with several cameras, between 5-8 covering every angle of the stage. The cameras are placed in front of the stage, by the monitor showing visuals, and placed left and right of the stage. Every camera is showing a different range of camera shots, such as close ups, medium shots, long shots, wide shots and a birds eye view. The reason for all these different shots is because it makes you feel like you’re actually at a Beyoncé concert, you get a visual of the whole thing with the way it’s set out, you get facial expressions, covers the whole show and every point she’s at on the stage. There’s cameras to cover the audience as it shown a lot throughout her performance, especially when they get involved and to see their reaction.

Communicating meaning to the viewer:

The programme makers are showing the event live on TV with the people at home so they don’t miss out the action such as winners, nominees, and performances from the stars. The producers are making the people at home feel like they are actually there watching the event (Beyoncé) in person as such. They are showing you and the audience the action from changing camera to camera smoothly, they also edit the action such as cutting from Beyoncé to some people in the audience, to her daughter and husband back to Beyoncé.

 

Visual style:

The look and feel of the event is like you’re actually at a Beyoncé concert, the way they show off her performance is like it’s not just a performance. For her visuals they don’t have a title sequence, but she has a word visual that is linked and in sync with what the voice over is saying. For the look of the stage for the main one or averaged sized, there are other parts of the stage that is connected to the main one but there is hardly anything on it. For the set design, there aren’t many props apart from the odd ones that go with a few of the songs that she sings. Such as there are a few chairs at the start in ‘Mine’, a conveyor belt in ‘Pretty Hurts’ and ‘Flawless’, a little platform in ‘Drunk In Love’, a fancy chair in ‘Partition’ and ‘Rocket’ and some dance poles in ‘partition’. For the background, she has visuals for nearly all the songs she sings, whether it’s her face, solid colours, parts of a video or even the word visual. For the lighting, there is so much as they go with the songs, the stage and the audience is quite dark but as soon as the visuals are up and all the flashing and spotlights on Beyoncé. The colours chosen are quite bright colours, they are colour co-ordinated with the songs and the videos that go with the song. The reason they’ve been chosen is because it makes it look professional, exciting, gives you different vibes and as I said they are colours that are linked with the songs and they also work with her outfit. For the costumes Beyoncé only has one outfit throughout the whole performance, it’s a multi-coloured sequin bodysuit, yet compared to her many dances, they all have different outfits as they only perform to a certain song that she’s singing, so you get to see a variety of looks to keep it fun and interesting. Towards the end you get to see all the dancers on stage with her so you can see them all at once. For the visual style there are so many different shot types, angles, and movement, so that it keeps the viewers staring at Beyoncé, and also with all the different lights and movements of them, it makes it even better looking knowing there is different shot types and movement as the camera follows her

around the stage.

 

Maintaining viewer interest:

The producers keep the audience engaged in what they are seeing by not having any breaks or ad-breaks during her performance so they keep the camera rolling through the whole thing. It also makes it look better having it as one whole thing, makes it more professional rather than having stop and starts in the performance. It makes it a lot less frustrating for Beyoncé herself and the audience. The MTV VMA 2014 event was live and usually throughout the programme they do have breaks but in Beyoncé’s nearly 18 minute performance, there wasn’t one single break, the cameras kept rolling until it was done, moving from camera to camera at different point of the stage so you don’t miss a single thing. Even with the edits, transitioning from Beyoncé to the audience the cameras are still rolling and with the different shots being done. There are pre-recorded clips as she uses visuals from her videos and the word visuals. The format of the programme is awards as it is performance based. There isn’t a common structure with this event as it’s music awards based.

Constraints of studio or location environment:

As it is a live event there are cameras everywhere covering the stage and audience. For this live event the cameras can’t be seen in the performance as they’ve made most of the place, mainly where the audience is its dark so the cameras can’t be seen so they don’t ruin the performance by being in the way. For this event it’s based in The Forum in Inglewood, California, so as it was hosted in a massive arena there wasn’t really any limits towards filming because there was so much space in there and cost didn’t have an effect on it either as so many people will pay just to be at an MTV event like that. For the issue about the amount of people being there like the audience and the stars, it isn’t really an issue because that’s what the arenas made for, millions of people being in there. Health and safety, I’m guessing that they are regularly checked for events like this as there are so many people that are going to be there. And especially with all the amount of lights and cameras that have to be checked for the event. With the stage and how big it’s going to be, I think MTV design the layout of how the place is going to look so they make the stage work with amount of space they have and where everything is going to be. And the performers have to work with the stage that they’ve designed for the night as well as the hosts of the night. For where the cameras are in the arena they are mainly round by the stage for the performers and for the hosts. There also some around where the audience is just do you can see their reaction. For the cameras they have a lot of movement so they can follow the action of what’s happening.

 

 

 

Multi-camera simultaneous recording:

For this I would say there are about 5 – 8 cameras recording the action. It’s useful to have 3 – 4 different cameras capturing the action at the same time because one, you get different camera angles and different movement of it. Two, because it one camera crashes there always others that will pick up what that camera isn’t even if it’s in a different angle. For covering crowds, it’s a good idea because as one camera cover the crowed and another covering the action at the same time so you don’t miss anything, if there was only one camera recording the whole thing and then they move to see the audience’s reactions which would ruin the performance and make it look unprofessional. For technical issues, like I said because they have many cameras recording the action at once it wouldn’t be that much if a big deal if one of them went down because they can quickly switch to another one as they are all rolling at the same time, so no action will be missed if one went down.  Yes it’s important to think about the fact that more than one thing could be happening at the same time, such as in Beyoncé’s performance there are people dancing while she’s at a different part of the stage singing. This is important for them to think about because they don’t want to miss it, so that’s why they have so many cameras rolling at the same time, and which is why it’s good for them to have the camera options as they can move from one to the other. Yet as this is recorded live there’s a schedule for the event anyway so there doesn’t really need to be someone who’s directing the action, they just film it.