Laura Lawton: June 2010

The mise en scene of R&B music is usually that the artist is a solo singer who has dancers within the background of the music video. The dancers outfits are usually quite similar to the artists outfits such as in Beyonce video of ‘Single Ladies’ Beyonce and her two dancers are all wearing black leotards and heels within the video. The artists do not use much facial expression in the videos and on their cd covers. Most of the songs that R&B artists produce are to do with love and relationships, some also talk about cheating and betrayal, this is shown through the words as well as showing a couple (man and women) arguing or walking together. The outfits that the artists wear are usually casual smart, for example Neyo wears white trousers and a blazer with a sort of casual hat. However some women would wear black dresses.

The lighting of the music videos are low key lighting and sometimes bright laser lights. There are also spotlights on different parts of the video. The solo artist is usually centred and within in the dancers, the dancers are usually not just dancers they are ‘characters’ within the video. There are many close up used to show the artists, this is also within a plain background which does not have much of a location. There are also uses of long shots to show the dancers and sometimes the location such as in Rihanna’s video of take a bow they are in a house. Extreme close ups are used to show objects in the shots to do with the narrative of the video. A lot of the music videos have a narrative that is shown by the artist.

Much of the artist videos show sex appeal within the video through the way they are dressed especially the women artists and through the way they look at the camera and the audience. They look at the camera as if it is the person they are talking about. Much of the colours used are quite dull, however recent video such as Rude Boy by Rihanna uses a lot of bright colours.