Noah and the Whale: 5 Years Time

I have always been a fan of this song but recently while researching I came across its video. I was surprised by the quality of its video; it is defiantly one of the best original videos I have seen in a long time. What I like best about this video is the Costumes and the Performance of all the actors taking part. The ridiculous retro costumes accompanied by big aviator sunglasses make the actors look odd; however the performance and attitude of the actors make the video great to watch.



The simple dance routines also stood out to me, they gave the video the simple but “summer-ish” feel. I think the producer of this video has made a great video for what seems to be a reasonably small budget; the small pub it was filmed in gave the video its calm old Mise En Scene which matches the costumes perfectly.

This video has many small details which when put together create an impressive originality, and because of those small details such as costume, setting, handheld camera angle, dance routines and the great miming/instrumental matching the video makes it unique. There is a good match of the characters playing the instruments to the other events which occur such as the dance routines which makes the video run smoothly and doesn’t seem “padded out”.





Below is the link to the video 5 Years Time by Noah and the Whale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4

Lips To The Floor

Lips to the Floor is an interesting music video by UK grime artist Dubbledge, the video and song its self was an attack on “Waste” Grime MC’s (according to Dubbledge himself.)The video is made up by a collage of well known YouTube accidents and fights. The video may be a huge breach of Copyright however I believe it is a great video. The music video it's self is hard to analyse in terms of camera angles and mies en scene, from people falling of stages to a man being chased by a lion this video has it all.

It’s not just the humorous clips that make this video enjoyable to watch I think the animated words that appear on the screen as dramatic subtitles emphasizing the lyrics in the video make it more than just a collage of simple humor. The video which was first uploaded to YouTube on the 26th of December 2006 I believe may have inspired some other collage videos.

In most cases collage videos go horribly wrong, it is easy to create a “padded out” idea of what someone believes is funny which in most cases the extreme opposite of the general public is. On the other hand a good example of a collage video that received public and online praise was Weezer’s Pork and Beans. Pork and Beans was realized on the 24th of April 2008, that’s more than 2 years after Lips to the floor. Also considering some of the clips used in Pork and Beans featured in Lips to the Floor two years earlier, the American rock band Weezer must have enjoyed Lips to the Floor enough to make their own version.

Below is the link for: Lips to the Floor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXxLbLvCRrk

Slipknot Vermillion

The music video Vermillion by Slipknot is rather unusual however it is extremely appealing and makes the audience want to watch on. The "slow movement" effect is created by the main character (Janna Bossier) walking extremely slow and every movement she makes is practically made in milliseconds, by doing this the camera is simply left to film on a tripod for most probably over an hour in a reasonably crowded public place, and when filming is finished they simply increase the speed of the film to create the effect. The effect produces a great feel to the video and you can sense the actress frustration of the world passing her by.

The reason why I thought of this video is that I believe that we could possibly use this style of editing. Although we have not started planning or storyboarding the music video I think that this effect can be very impressive when done correctly.

Also we could use this style of editing but in reverse, by reverse I mean our character walking normally but everyone else in the background moving very slowly to make our character seem very hyper. If all the people in the scene ignore the main character as he tries to speak to them it would be a great way to show our characters desperateness and how unsociable he seems to other people.

The music video shows a confused character walking though New York following a butterfly, her frustration is clear to see due to the Mise en scene and her heavily duty eye make up. I am a big fan of this video and believe we can use some of its ideas for our own music video.

The Brief

My name is Jack Rush and I have just completed AS level Media and am waiting for my final grade. I wish to continue with Media for A Level and our task for A2 is to create a Blog portraying and reflecting our ever increasing knowledge of the Media and specifically Pop videos. Our main task is to produce a music video. The Music video has to be within 3 to 5 minutes long, so the challenge of producing enough film for the video without using the same material multiple times (padding out) may be difficult. Considering our Thriller introduction had to be only two minutes long we may struggle, with this in mind I am looking forward to the challenge and am starting planning already