Christina Aguilera - The Voice Within

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWixUIMTjYc
This was one of the music videos we were going to perform for our final piece but there weren't much going on in the video it was just quite a boring video. It is called 'The Voice Within' by Christina Aguilera, and was released in 2003. This single is known for how simple it is, and the fact that it was filmed in black and white as a continuous camera shot. The genre characteristics of this music video is the stage performance of a continuous close up camera shot of christina's face and she doesn't dance at all it is a whole video of walking around lip syncing. Walking around and not running around madly and by wearing the dress she has on and not wearing baggy jeans shows that this video is of a 'pop' genre and not a 'rock' or 'emo' genre. This song shows a storyline in the lyrics 'To trust the voice within'. A young girl feels she has nobody to turn to so christina is singing her feelings and advice to this young girl. There isn't really much of a relationahip between the lyrics and visuals of this music video apart from the story of the song is about a 'Young girl being alone' and the visuals relates to this by Christina being alone on the video giving advice to others. The relationship between the music and the visuals of this music video are that this song is of a 'pop' genre and this is easily recognised by the performance of the singer and the brigt background although its recorded in black and white it still isn't terribly dark like a 'rock' video would be. There is nothing but close-up camera shots of Christina in the beginning part of the music video but as the video goes on the camera shots change from being close-up to medium close ups to distant camera shots. This is very effective because she puts more aggression into her singing as the song progress further and the camera shots change as the song progress and then ends with a close up. There is no reference to the notion of looking such as screens within screens or telescopes, this music video is very simple. There are intertextual references with the song 'Beautiful' also sang by Christina Aguilera as both music videos have the same close up camera views to begin with and both have the same genre and speed of music. Both music videos are very simple and not much to them to begin with but the song 'Beautiful' has more of a recording contrast of footage in it. This music video is very much narrative based as it tells a story of being alone which is shown in the video of Christina Aguilera being alone. Overall i think this video is very simple and wasn't a very good choice for us to perform as our final piece as there wouldn't have been much to record. It would have been me alone all the way through the video lip syncing and walking around which wouldn't have been as fun as the video we did which included lip syncing, dancing, change of backgrounds and was much more enjoyable.