JP: Analysis of music videos

 

Of Monsters and Men - King and Lionheart

• Conceptual narrative
• The CGI, two-dimensional backgrounds create a fantasy style image which also appear like a childrens' picture book.
• The juxtaposition of dark, black and white 2D background and the colourful 3D characters and CGI effects make these bright aspects stand out against the complex background.
• The Nordic art style of the video is seen in other videos by the artist and is a reflection of the style of the music and the grain of voice and is part of the meta-narrative of the band as a folk Icelandic band.
• The actions  and cuts are anchored by the music

 

Paramore - Now

• Narrative with some performance (lip-syncing) as part of the narrative
• There is a link between music and visuals. The song is energetic with a sense of violence to it which is reflected in the video. There is not necessarily a link between the meaning of the lyrics and the video however they are linked by the lip syncing and the video could be viewed as an amplification


• The colour wash is light and grey which gives is a 'clouded' appearance that is also created by the powder thrown in the video, however the red, pink and orange colours throughout the video are bright against this clouded look and as the video and narrative continues there is an increase in colour


• The video enhances the star image of Hayley Williams by making her the focus of the video. Dyer's theory of star image, that the image of the star is not a real person and that a star has to be both ordinary and extraordinary is seen in this video

 

Bastille - Of the Night

• The concept of the video could be viewed as amplification of the music with the lyrics "of the night" relating to the night life of the characters in the video. However there does seem to be some disjuncture of the music and video.


• While the images seem to be a compilation of separate images, it could be argued that the form a narrative


• The images are are desaturated and filmed using a handheld camera and the grain causes it to appear low quality giving the appearance of old, vintage style as well as the movement and camera angles making it feel like it was recorded by someone attending an event


• This old-fashioned effect causes the video to feel like recorded memories


• The indie pop/rock genre of the artist is clear through the meta-narrative created by the video and the absence of performance from the artist. This goes against the usual presence of the artist to enhance their star image

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know?

• This video is a very simple conceptual video

• There is a synchronization of the music and visuals (Goodwin) with the sound waves vibrating to the vocals and beat of the song

• The video continues into coloured animation of other images. These is some disjuncture with these images as the women cars and animals shown seem to be unrelated to the music or lyrics

• The last shot of the video is the band's 'AM' logo, drawing a close to the video.

• Barthes idea of 'grain of voice' as the voice as an expressive instrument is clear here as the voice itself has associations and is easily recognised without the image of the singer being required in the video 

 

Avril Lavigne - Rock N Roll

 

• This video is a narrative with disjuncture from the original meaning of the song. There is also some performance.

• The video has a comic book influence. There is a mixture of filmed footage and drawing and animation as well as text within the video. 

• There are intertextual references within the video such as the reference to the artist's earlier song 'Sk8ter Boi' and reference to the Sony Xperia phone advertisement

• The narrative is important to the video, the song is interrupted for scenes that further the narrative of the video 

• There are many close ups of Avril Lavigne which further and develop the motifs which recur throughout the work of the artist. The rebellious rock-chick persona of the artist is clear within the video

Looking at a number of videos has been useful in our concept development as we can see which aspects work well and work less well with particular styles of music. Many of the videos develop the meta-narrative of the artist and this is something we would like to include in our video. We are interested in making a narrative-based video and looking at these videos has provided some ideas into how that would work.
Also, looking at professionally made videos gives an idea of our limitations based on budget, skill and resources. For example, I really liked the 'Of Monsters and Men' video and the idea of using animation like that but it is something we would be unlikely to be able to create at a good standard.