The first video that I am analysing is "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie. this video opens up with an establishing shot of Bowie sitting alone in some sort of alien land, this immediately establishes the idea that he is isolated and lonely which is a theme that continues throughout the video.
The video maintains a slow pace of editing, they accomplish this; one by letting shots run longer than in many music videos, and two by using fade transitions opposed to strait cuts this also played into the dream like theme of the piece. another way that they transitioned between scenes was with the interesting idea of characters holding photographs which would then be zoomed to in order to reach the next scene.
The action of the video switches between these shots of a weird and wonderful world and scenes of Bowie sitting alone in what looks like some sort of mental institution. this gives us the story of the video, being of a man who has been declared insane being lost in a world of his own imagination. This piece also has themes of loneliness as the man is seen entirely alone in the asylum scenes, and is only surrounded by people in his scenes of imagination, leading us to believe that he longs for company.
The next music video that I have looked at is from Britpop band Oasis, the song is called Wonderwall. This is one of their most famous songs and the music video won an award and is considered one of the most influential in the genre. The first thing that yo uwill notice about the video is that it is almost entirely in greyscale. This colour scheme does two things, first it sets a definite tone for the video, secondly is that it highlights certain objects such as the instruments as they retain their colour. Overall this creates a striking and memorable look for the video.
This colour scheme can be seen to the left here. As you can see, the guitar on the left here is highlighted in blue to make it stand out against the bland background. The action of the piece is mainly just the band performing in a warehouse as well as some more interesting shots of Noel rotating around the screen as shown above. In this shot Noel does a full rotation whilst singing the song. We also have quite a few close up shots of Noel whilst he's singing some of the more powerful lyrics. The editing maintains quite a slow pace throughout the video to keep in line with the music and with the genre.
The third music video that I am analysing here today is "Back for Good" by insanely popular pop/Britpop band Take That. The first shot of this video is of a stormy car park which slowly pans up as the group drives in. this instantly sets the tone of the video. The story is the tragedy of a man being left by his loved one and now he just wants them "Back for good".
Much like Oasis' video, they use greyscale to aid the feel of the piece. Also like Oasis' though, a large amount of the video is simply spent focused on the performance of the band, and in particular on close up shots of Gary singing: as seen on the left. As I have said previously, this helps us really relate to the main singer and to see and feel the emotion that they are trying to get across. One interesting thing about the performance of this video is that all of the band members are seen playing joyfully except for Gary who does not join in, this could be representative of how he is feeling within the story of the song, in that he is not able to be happy with this loss that he is gone through.
No comments:
Post a Comment