Research & Planning: Analysing Music Videos

As a group we broke down and analysed the particular aspects of our chosen song: The 1975 - "UGH!":

• Upbeat & happy rather than mellow.
• Fast 
• Song with a groove
• Modern sounding
• With Band
• "Disco" vibe

Then we searched for and analysed existing, professional music videos for songs which had similar features.

Bad Suns - Cardiac Arrest

• Each scene has a very dominant coloured hue. They stick predominantly to red, yellow and blue. Only rarely do the colours mix through use of lens flare. It is possible that particular scenes or characters have a colour assigned to them. The band was yellow, the city blue, and the girl red. 
• The video was interlaced with shots of imagery related to the song and narrative. For example, there were flowers, a swimming pool and shots of a city-scape. Although possibly used as filler, the visual effects and the camera work do make these shots visually interesting and relevant.
• The band is standing in a circle, playing the song. The camera is situated in the middle, and takes various, dynamic shots of the bands faces & their instruments.

For our own video, I think we can look into taking shots of abstract imagery. Particularly as we are going with a medical theme. We are already organising props such as mirrors, models of bodies and science equipment. 

The band shots are interesting, but I think for our own video we would prefer something more clinical & choreographed. In this video, it looks as if the band is just rehearsing, and it looks too organic to suit our song. 

We will certainly experiment with similar visual effects such as coloured hues and filters, as our lighting scheme is likely to be blues and pinks. 

Wild Cub - Thunder Clatter

• Clear distinction between band & narrative through setting and camera work, School gym, car park, 
• Very low saturation & brightness, looks almost gloomy. Reflects the narrative, plus the song itself, if you look past the rhythm, is fairly melancholy. 
• The Narrative is relevant to the lyrics, with many separate, but relevant stories.

For our own video, we want the mis en scene to be considerably more colourful and saturated than this particular video, however, some of the shots and angles, especially of the band, look great and are replicable.

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

• Strikingly colourful, high contrast. 
• Montage at the beginning of bodily functions (eyes blinking, muscles moving etc). 
• Microscopic shots of bodily functions & organisms,
• Stop Motion
• Stationary camera
• Prop-heavy
• Everything related to lyrics, sometimes directly.

For our own video, we were most interested with recreating the montage at the beginning of this video of all the micro and macro shots of bodily functions. The rest of the video is too 80s cheesy for our song, and as there is no band there are not many shots we can replicate. 

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Next, we analysed student-made music videos.

Because these examples were created with budget, equipment and facilities similar to our own, they are more sensible to analyse to find shots, effects & themes that we can replicate or draw from. 

Daughter - Youth

• Soft, glowing colours. Sunset red, blue and red of fairy lights.
• All very close up shots.
• Only one character.
• Enclosed spaces, feels very close.

Bondage Fairies - Miss Volkova

• Funny narrative, characters and locations.
• Coloured lights in a vast studio, lots of room/empty space. Feels open. 

'Breathing in the Pieces' by Martin Felix Kaczmarski

• All B&W
• Nice shots of the back of a driving car. Perhaps our group could do a shot at night with the lights on?
• Close shots of the singer with the band in the background.
• Jaunted angles. We want out video to look more neutral and 'clinical', in terms of the angles. Sort of like Wes-Anderson. Mid-distance, wide angle shots. but we'll see what looks best. 
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