2000 word task

Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning

The video for “Crying Lightning” by Alex Turner’s Arctic Monkeys is the first single of there much hyped third album “Humbug“. The video is the public’s first real viewing of the bands new more grown up and artistic image. This song has quite a dark side to the lyrics and that is very much reflected in the video, the colours used in the background of the set are quite gloomy and the dark sunset works perfectly in relationship to the mood and tempo of the song. The video was directed by Richard Ayoade, he was also the director for the video “Fluorescent Adolescent“, the second single from the previous album but with a similar tempo and feel to the song “Crying Lightning“.

The most direct link between lyrics and visuals in the music video are the relationship between the words crying lightning which are said a lot during the song and the rainy weather throughout the video after the first verse and then during and after the guitar solo lightning thrashes around the boat and in the sky. The video is quite conventional in the fact that there is the typical situation of the band performing the song in a different location other than a stage or a studio.

Another typical feature is that the guitar solo in the song is the main focus of the video when it happens, in this instance it shows a giant version of front man and guitarist Alex Turner appearing from out the water in front of the bands boat. The boat then travels through the giant figures legs, as they do this the band gazes up in astonishment while Turner carries on singing. Later on in the video the other three members of the band also appear out of the water for the last chorus and then for the ending of the song. Throughout the video the band never appears to be looking at the camera and seems to be performing to the huge space of sea and sky in front of them to give a feel of loneliness.

NERD - Rockstar

The video for NERD’s song “Rockstar” is the second single from there debut album In search of NERD. The video is set in a school very similar to that of the setting for Deftones “Back to school“, unlike other video’s that I have looked at this video has a brief scene before the music kicks in where a gym teacher is shouting at his class of what may be seen as “geeks” before the song kicks in with the first verse.

Lead singer Pharell Williams takes the lead role as one of the class members throughout the video, he is the centre of attention the whole way through as the camera pans around him a lot, a good example of this is in third scene when the class is playing doge ball and Pharell just stands in the middle of the room singing as balls fly all around him but yet avoid him to give him a cool and calm character. There is the conventional performance scenes in the video for “Rockstar” as the same gym from the first two scenes is then turned into a concert with all the class mates and cheerleaders dancing on the stands of the gym as NERD play the song, even the teacher is seen to have lightened up and is dancing to NERD‘s performance.

There is a constant relationship between lyrics and visuals through the video, the lyrics are sung by many people during the video but it mainly shows front man Pharell singing. Another example of this is when Pharell Williams says “your in dream land” and he makes the action of falling asleep on his hands. There is quite a sexual nature to the video with various very attractive girls with short skirts and tight tops dancing and grinding to the music, but unlike most rap videos that have these themes in them NERD’s has a comedic atmosphere to it as well, in the second scene cheerleaders are seen falling through the ceiling next to the “geeky” character. The feel of voyeurism for the video is that you feel like you’re looking on to the chaos in the school as some strange things are happening such as a little monkey stopping basketball players from scoring, mascots falling all over the place and people skateboarding in the gym. “Rockstar” has been to date NERD’s most successful song, it reached number 15 in the UK singles chart.

Florence And The machine - Rabbit Heart

This video is the 2009 release of Florence and the Machine’s “Rabbit heart“, it has over 500,000 views on Youtube and is the bands forth single, the song will appear on the upcoming “Lungs” album. It has the same kind of feel to it that other Florence and the Machine video’s have, with the eccentric costumes and a fairy tale atmosphere to the scenery and situation The main thing that the audience grasps through this music video is the characteristics of Florence Welch. She is very unique in the way she performs, the clothes that she wears and the mannerisms that only she posses through her performances. I believe that the record company would have given her complete control in the way that she goes about things with all of her appearances, such as music video’s and live performances as they see that she is very individual and has a charm to her that they would not want to take away by setting her rules and boundaries about what to do and what to wear.

In the video for “Rabbit heart” the main relationship between visuals and lyrics is shown through each chorus, nearly every time that Florence sings “and turns me to gold in the sunlight” there is a shot of the sky or you catch a glimmer of a bright light, whether it be natural or synthetic. Another relationship between the lyrics and visuals is right at the start of the song, and about a second or two before Florence says “I start spinning slipping out of time” she spins while surrounded by the two other girls either side of her. There is not a heavy relationship between the music and the visuals, the only thing you could really gather from it is that every time a different part of the songs structure kicks in the scene changes in the video, for example when the transition between the verse and the and the pre-chorus the scene changes from when the girls are dancing in the field to a close up shot of Florence singing in front of the lake.

I would say that in the video there are some intertextuality references to Alice in Wonderland by the way that the video revolves around one girl and the whole situation they find themselves in seems very surreal and fairy tale like.

As for the notion of voyeurism you get the typical feeling of looking into a situation where the band is performing, this is slightly different in this video because Florence and the Machine revolves more around Florence as a solo artist so the camera revolves around her throughout the video, you often find this with solo performers that have a consistent backing band. The video is almost split in half with the notion of looking from Florence as half the time she is looking into the camera so the audience gets the feel of her performing to you, and the other half is her looking into the distance, down at the ground or looking at others in the scenery.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californiacation

The video for Californiacation is the Chilli's 4th single from the album of the same name, It was released in June of 2000. The video has the conventional mix of performance shots and story shots, although it is innovative in Californiacation as the storyline shots are all animated. It shows the band in game like adventures as the members in a third person view that makes you feel as your in video games controlling the characters, this view is inforced by the life bars and player selection screens throughout the video. There is alot of intertextuality in the gaming scenes as the adventures of the band members are spin off representations of games like "Crazy Taxi" "Grand Theft Auto" "Tomb Raider" and "Resident Evil"

The performance sequences in the video for Californiacation are vintage of the Chilli Peppers, complete with lead singer Anthony Kiedis trademark hand movements when he sings and John Frusciante's Guitar solo facial expressions. The single is also seen as one of the bands most meaningful songs as it covers the subjects of pornography, the recent decline of western civilisation and Hollywood's darker side. These are all excentuated by lyrics such as "hardcore soft porn" which is sung in the bridge before the chorus throughout the song.

The video is full of links between lyrics and visuals, for example in the first verse when the lyrcis "Little girls from Sweden dream of silver screen quotations" in the game sequence guitarist John Frusciante runs past a young blonde girl getting off a bus about to enter a movie agency that looks a bit rough, you can tell this as when you look at the sign above the door from the agency it has letters missing and letters wonky and broken on the board. Another example of this is when the lyrics "A teenage bride with a baby inside" are sung, bass player Flea runs past a young pregnant girl in a forest who is holding her belly.

Bullet For My Valentine - Tears Dont Fall

The video for Tears Dont Fall is the Welsh bands 4th single of there debut Studio album "The Poison" The video that is more commonly known is not actually the original for the song, there was a different storyline to video, although nearly all the performance sequences by the band in the rain are kept the same. The original video was dropped because of its content of the storyline, it involved a girl catching her boyfriend making out with another girl, being distraught the girl performs voodoo rituals on on a doll representing the boyfriend which in turn hurts him. The girl then throws the doll in the fire, which simultaniously causes the car the boyfriend and another girl were in to explode, killing them both. The record company felt that they would make a new video as they didn't feel that it would be able to have mainstream success and would have to be cut for daytime television.

I decided to research this video as it is a good example of the kind of video my group are trying to achieve for the song " The prom queen has no friends". We will try to use a similar performance sequence with the band playing in heavy rain, although in our video the rain scenes will only happen towards the end of the song when there is more aggressive singing and a heavy drum beat. This video is very heavily performance orientated, with rarely 5 seconds of a shot going past without there being a scene with the band in it. All of Bullet For My Valentine video's are of the same structure, the best example of this is the video for there much older single "4 words to choke upon"

Although all the video's i researched were of a similar genre, i felt it unnecessary to branch out into mainstream pop or any other genre's far from what my video will be trying to achieve. Also i did'nt feel the need to look at unusual music video's with extremely different scructure's and purposes to that of the generic Pop/Rock genre.