Analysis of Music Videos #1

Everything I asked for - The Maine

• Performance/Narrative style of video.
• Animated background, white and yellow stripes and coloured spirals. Use of bright colours, signifies a youth audience, teenage male band, maybe young teen or tween audience?
• Paparazzi, make-up artists. Photoshoot? Fashion show? Intercuts between band performing and the narrative/concept set up of a fashion show. Judges holding up scores, like a "beauty pagant".
• Lot's of close up shots of females faces, applying make-up.
• High angle shots of band members in what looks like a changing room, vulnerable men, dominant attractive women? Femme fatale? These attracitve females being superior to young males. Successful models? Teenage band.
• Fast paced editing, with the beat of the song.
• Band playing on the cat walk that the girls are walking on, trying to gain their attention but being ignored. One girl hits a band member in the face, the band members infatuated with the girls and the girls not being interested, women having the power. post-feminism?
• Male gaze? admiration of these dominant attractive females. Tease. Attractive females in control, post-feminist idea that women choose to look like that and not a patriarchal society.
• Male gaze idea comes back into play, as towards the end we have the girls in gold bikini's as it seems now maybe the males have control of the situation as they pull strings like puppet strings and the girls clothes come off, could connote men now have the balance of power?
• Quite light hearted and suggestive but not overly sexual, teenage audience also due to swearing in the lyrics and singing about sex. Also some forms of animation help to anchor the target audience of the band and the song. Perhaps a bit of Irony or juxta positon as the video is suggestive whilst also being quite light hearted and appropriate for the tweenage audience, but the them of the song is more sexually orientated and more for a late teenage audience.

Use Somebody - Kings of Leon

• Helicopter shot of a city at night, intercuts to shots from alternative angles, elliptical editing.
• Mid shot of band getting out of a van.
• Fast paced editing, intercuts of flashbacks, plane flying, performance, band walking down a hall way.
• Behind the scenes shots, speed up footage like a point of view shot of car on the freeway. Band in hotel room, smoking, drugs?
• When the lyrics start, we have a close up of the singers face quite dull dark lighting, then intercuts of flashes back to a quick shot of a couple ebracing lying down. warm lighting.
• Mixture of narrative and performance video, the singer is performing within the narrative and the behind the scenes footage is part of the narrative. With flash backs to concerts with huge audiences.
• Use of strobe/flashing lights and the night sky.
• Cuts back to black and white footage of performance and behind the scenes, flashback. not part of the narrative.
• Then back to colour footage, narrative. American bar setting, pool table, smoking, beer bottles.
• Quick shots of couple embracing, red sports car, again fast paced editing. Elliptical time? Like it is trying to signify a band tour and maybe telling the story backwards?
• Ends with lead singer sat in appartment/hotel room? dull lighting like the video has been a narrative of a memory?
• Footage kept with the tempo and beat and speed of the music, the quicker the tempo the quick/faster the footage.