Nada Surf - Always Love (video analysis)

In the actual video of 'Nada Surf - Always Love', as explained in the previous post, this video features more of a story than focusing on lyrics, which is interesting for an indie band to do, although not unheard of.

The various shots above show there is also a story to the video. The shot of the old man in the room is part of the story, and a shot angled in this particular way is an effect used normally to create a feeling of loneliness. (The elderly man is at the very far side of the room, and is considered a little smaller in the frame than normal, there is more of the room in the frame as opposed to this character.)

The shots also show characteristics yet again of an indie style of music, with close ups to the instruments and main character of the band, which (most of the time) is the singer. We see shots of the other members of the band also, but tend to focus on the story and the main band character. In one shot above, the main singer in the band is shown closer to the camera and larger than the other band members - this is to signify him as more important.

Overall, I think the video is effective, the only downside is the story is quite confusing when first watched.

Nada Surf - Always Love

I then though of adding another song to my blog which I thought of adding last night. Yet again, this song is off the US TV series 'One Tree Hill'. This song is very similar to the others in terms of pace, genre etc.

The band are called 'Nada Surf' and the song track name is 'Always Love'. The clip from the TV series (posted below) focuses very much on the lyrics of the song and the ideas that you get from listening to it. However the actual video in the next post does not focus too much on the lyrics and has more of a story behind the song.

The same effect is used as in the same clip from the below post, featuring Feeder. The song (like the post video below) plays in the background while the TV episode plays. The music the fluctuates in certain parts to empathise or de-empathise what going on in the episode. This TV series does this a lot, and this is where some of the songs I have found which I like the sound of, and think would be good to use in my music video have come from.


For clear mention of referencing, I have added the video where I first heard the song below.

Feeder 'Feeling a Moment' CD cover

Here is the official feeder CD cover, from the website http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B0007W0LBY/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0.

I think it is very interesting with listening to the band's songs and everything that this was would the single cover to 'Feeling a moment'. It is entirely different to the cover I would expect after listening to the songs and thought the cover would at least feature the band. However, the cover is effective none the less with an animation style cover of what appears to be mountains and sky lifts. 

I thought I would give a mention to the band's single cover as this is the favourite of the songs I have researched and quite like the sound of 'Feeling a moment' for my music video. It is also important to take into account what kinds of album covers there are within bands, or artists. \

-There is the traditional cover, with a picture of the band at work or a portfolio shot which some bands tend to like, or there is an animation style cover such as the one above etc.

Feeder 'Feeling a Moment' Analysis

This particular song and some of their others are also considered in the genre 'Alternative rock'. The song is called 'Feeling a moment', and if you listen to it, you can see that the song is slower that some of the songs done by Jacks Mannequin. The youtube video below is a little pixelated, but the video is still clear.

The music video is quite simple, with all the characteristics of an 'indie' music video, close ups of the main singer, shots of instruments, pans in/out/around of the camera, effects, and shots of the other band members, although not as frequently as the main singer in the band. I think the video is effective, and I really like the song, its slow paced for the majority so therefore would be easier to lipsync with than a faster paced one.

Further song research - Feeder

I then thought of another band in which one of their songs would be good for my music video. It fits well with the indie genre, and is slower paced and different to the band 'Jacks Mannequin', so maybe something slower as another alternative would be a good idea.

The band are called 'Feeder' and are a more well known band than the US band Jacks Mannequin. I had heard a couple of their songs before, but this specific song I heard also on the US TV series 'One Tree Hill'. It was just background music on the show, but I liked the sound of the song so I researched the artist's name and the song name, realising it was the band Feeder. A link to their Myspace is posted, click on this text and have a look here. The URL is http://www.myspace.com/feederweb.

Below is also the clip from the US TV series in which I first heard the specific song. While watching through the song is playing in the background while the show continues, I thought this clip would be relevant to put in here as it shows the link in which I had found the song I liked and researched the band.

Mix of genre/characteristics music video

However, one video that may mix characteristics of a music genre, as explained in previous posts, is the video to the 'Artic Monkeys - Brianstorm' music video.

The music is an indie genre, however, the video features a specific dance or dancers, which is usually a characteristic of a pop or hip hop video. Perhaps the two are juxtaposed to create an effect and get the video noticed. There are both characteristics of an indie video and a pop video.

The dancers and dance symbolise a characteristic of a pop video whereas the shots of the band and instruments are characteristics of an indie video. None the less, the two mix well.

Either way, this video is definitely one that mixes genres and characteristics of videos. I had seen the video numerous times before, but though I would add it to my blog in order to show there is sometimes a mix in music genre and characteristics, I also like the style of the video.

I think jumpy shots and various short shots, add a fast paced and hurrying element to the video - which is shown in the arctic monkeys one. I think these shots are effective and has certainly worked to blend well with the audio, as the audio features a lot of jumpy, rhythmic music, with a lot of drums and guitar playing.

'Progidy - The way it is' student music video analysis

Another video I found which is different from the other two is an electronic style audio track with a fast paced and jumpy video. The video is to 'Progidy - The way it is' music track, and the student has added a lot of jumpy, rotating and fast paced camera shots, as opposed to any static shots.

The shots are obviously to go with the video, and this is obvious by the speed of the camera filming - which is effective. The only problem is the shots get very repetitive, and are very similar throughout, so you feel that you do not really want to watch the video all the way through, because it is simply all the same.

The video is obviously a different type of music to indie music, and is called 'electronic' or 'rave' music. The songs are the majority of the time, fast paced and often feature fast paced and jumpy shors - so this video has done well to catch that, however the downside is it is simply too repetitive - some different shots and effects would have been nice.

'Arctic monkeys - When the sun goes down' analysis

The next video I found was an arctic monkeys

cover, done by another A level group at another college. The video features 'Indie' characteristics of a music video, with close ups to the singer in the band and close ups of band members.

It also shows close ups of band instruments, such as the guitar, and close ups of the main singer in the band singing. The camera angles are good with a consistent level of variety. I think some camera angles like this would be very useful in my music video if I choose to do an 'indie' audio track.

The video also features a story behind the video, which is often used in indie videos, for example a story was used behind the song 'Naive' by The Kooks. A story is a great idea and a good thing to add to a video, but with the other footage it can sometimes confuse the audience, this is not the case in this video though, the story fits well.

'Paramore - Fences' student video analysis

This next video is a student video for A level media, and it is an imitation of 'Paramore - Fences' music video. What I like about this video is that the group are very experimental and not afraid to try something different.

Paramore as a band, are very well known and because if this quite hard to copy. However, this group has managed it, and I think they did it very effectively. The video is matched up with the lyrics very effectively and the effects used are excellent, the rotation of the camera and sharp turns empathise the fast pace of the music and the style of music.

The video looks very effective for a music video, and you wouldn't go far wrong to think it was an actual video if you had never heard of the original artist. The only downside is the main girl character's lipsyncing is a bit off at times, but whether this is an effect of editing or in general the video is still effective. Most of all, I like the judders of the camera, the rotation and mood created by the video - I think they all match excellently with the music track.

'The Mixed Tape' lipsync video

Here is a lipsync video for Jack's Mannequin, 'The Mixed Tape'. The video is quite effective, and the transitions and fade ins/outs work very well with the lyrics.

The fades show flashbacks in the story and match well again with the lyrics - this shows again that you can have a story to a music video or you can choose not to, but trying to do too many things in a music video may cause it to be confusing. Perhaps something simple would be best.

There are two shots i particularly like in this video, which I have screengrabbed and added to the post at the very top. The first is the numerous fades of the main character waiting in a room, and this is effective as it is an effect used to show time is going by.

The next shot is one nearer the end of the main character getting out of a car onto the airport, and the figure looks like a silhouette against the background of a sunset. This is very effective and is perhaps used to show an emotional shot.

However, the video is very misleading while watching, and at first is very confusing. At the start, the transitions and fade outs suggest the main character has lost their partner. However later on, we see the girl with someone else showing she is still alive. This is very confusing while first watching.

'Dark Blue' Imitation video

After looking at the original videos for Jacks' Mannequin, I decided to look onto Youtube to see if I could find any other imitation videos done by other Youtube fans.

The first one I found was an imitation of 'Dark Blue'. This was one made entirely with pictures, with 92 pictures in total. Listening to the song, the pictures are clearly relevant to the lyrics but simply do not match with the rhythm and fast paced beats of the songs. Some pictures last far too long and on the faster paced parts of the song the pictures are simply too slow. Although some of the fade ins/outs and transitions worked with the chorus.

This links to a discussion in class about pictures or video matching the rhythm of a song. It is clearly important that the visual part of the video matches well with the audio part, otherwise the video and the two parts (audio and visual) will simply not work together.

Jacks Mannequin music video 3

The next video is another song from Jacks Mannequin, which I do not like as much as the other two songs but I think the video is very good in matching with the time and beat of the music. It has a lot of cuts, as do the other two Jacks Mannequin videos. This video also has a lot of shots of the main member of the band again, whereas the other members do not appear much, if at all. This video has alot of close ups of the main member, and the camera uses alot of pan up, pan down shots to get a good view of the main member and the surroundings.

Overall, I think out of the Jacks Mannequin videos, the first one is the most effective, the music video for 'The Mixed Tape. I think the animation works really well with the music and due to this i think it is the most effective.

Jacks Mannequin music video 2

The next video is a video and song I really like, perhaps more than the original song I found. This song is called 'Dark Blue' and the video is embedded below. The video has a slight story to it, which is a bit strange and mysterious if watched all the way through.

The video does not pay much attention to the lyrics, but does follow the characteristics of an indie rock genre music video. There is alot of close ups to the main member in the band, (Andrew Mcban) while there are some shots of the other members of the band playing drums or guitar etc. I like this song the most out of the two as in comparison to the first video, it is slower paced, and has a calmer feel to the song.

Jacks Mannequin music video 1

This video below is the actual video for the song you heard in the previous post, 'The Mixed Tape'. The video is in the style of an animation, which blends well with the lyrics. It is only the second time I have seen the actual video for the track as it is unavailable on YouTube. I think the track works very well for an indie genre of music and the effect of the animation is very effective, maybe an effect like this in my music video could also be effective. Kirk used the same or a similar effect on his film opening, which made his camera footage appear cartoon-like, similar ot the effect in the video.

Favourite Indie band

However, I have came across a band which I think would be great for my music video. They are not well known in the UK, as they are more of a US band, therefore they will not be as well known as some bands and this would perhaps be acceptable to use in my music video.

I have emailed asking for consent and permission to use one of their songs but no reply as of yet. I first came across the band while watching a US TV series 'One Tree Hill'. However it was about a year ago that I first heard the band, and have only just realised they would be a great band to use. I have also managed to find the original clip with the band in, and have embedded it below. The band are called 'Jacks Mannequin'.

Further Ideas

From my original and initial idea of a dance music video, I have realised this will simply be too much for students to handle with upcoming A level pressure and other lessons to contend with, so this would be very hard to do and it would be too much pressure for them.

I am now thinking of doing an 'indie rock' genre music video, and i also have a band that would be willing to lipsync and be in the music video too, which would be perfect. Therefore I have started to research a few indie bands on Myspace, such as The kooks, The arctic monkeys, Kasabian, Franz Ferdinand and Oasis. I have also listened to some of their songs which are very influential and i believe would go well with any music video. Some are a bit fast paced and some are slower - but any would work well with my music video.

Hip Hop music Genre

Another music genre for a music video is the 'Hip Hop' genre. It is a music genre typically consisting of a rhythmic vocal style called rap which is accompanied with backing beats. Hip hop music is part of hip hop culture which began in New York City in the 1970s, among African Americans and Latin Americans.

Hip Hop is similar to R&B as a style of music and a culture of music, but is different in terms of sound. Hip hop music is generally very violent, with swearing and fast based rapping. Rapping is a vocal style in which the performer speaks rhythmically to a beat of music. The characteristics of a hip hio music video includes slow transitions of fade ins/outs, and shots of a lavish lifestyle, for example the shot of the Mercedes above and the mansion.

The video also features rapping, as shown by the picture above, but the only difference is that this video 'Notorious B.I.G - Sky's the limit' uses children instead of the actual rappers. However most hip hop videos have clear shots of the artist rapping including close ups and often flash backs of events that have happened, usually closely related to the lyrics.

Indie rock genre

Here is a pop video as opposed to an 'Indie rock video' to show the harsh difference in colour between the two.





Another genre of a music video is 'Indie rock'. The characteristics of Indie rock is as follows:

Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that mainly exists in the independent underground music scene. Indie rock musicians are mostly unsigned, or have signed to independent record labels rather than major ones.

Indie rock artists place a premium on maintaining complete control of their music and careers, releasing albums on independent record labels (sometimes their own) and relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion.

Indie rock as opposed to Pop or R&B is totally different, it is alot slower and the music videos follow a different camera effect, more of a pan around, up and across of the camera as opposed to a lot of fast paced shots. A good example of an India rock band is 'The Fratellis, with their single 'Whistle for the choir'. Indie rock videos often show more main shots of the main character in the band and some shots of the band altogether. The video below shows alot of camera panning and all in all a slower pace than the other two areas of music genre. R&B and pop videos often focus on alot of vibrant colour to attract the audience, while an indie rock video is more black and white style.

R&B music video genre

The next music video genre is an R&B video genre, which also has clear characteristics to establish the genre of the music video. These are slow transitions eg fade ins, fade outs, and R& music videos often feature more than one artist, which portray each artist in a different light.

As R&B songs tend to be slower than Pop, the shots are slightly slower paced and not as lively. A good example of this is 'Keri Hilson ft Kayne West and Ne-Yo - Knock You Down'. As you can tell immediately from the name, this video features more than one artist, in this case it features three. From watching the below video, you can see each artist is portrayed in a different way during the video.

You can also see the fade ins, outs of the transitions and slightly slower paced cuts. There is also a split screen effect in this video, which shows two artists in a different way to one another - as you can see from the picture above. As you watch the video, you will also see the video does pay attention to the lyrics and the video has been based around the lyrics, like most R&B videos are.

Music video genres

There are many genres in which music videos could originate from. The most common are Pop, R&B, Hip Hop, Indie, and Rock. For pop music videos, we looked at some interesting videos in class which clearly show characteristics of 'pop' video, such as there is (the majority of the time) some kind of dance routine or dance to go with the video.

There is also lots of close ups to the singers of the video and shots which portray them in a certain way for a the purpose of the video - showing attention to mise en scene in the video. Also, the most common pop song singers are often Girl bands or sometimes, boy bands. Sometimes there are pop videos made by one single artist also. A good example and one we looked at in class is 'The Saturdays - Just Can't Get Enough'.



The video was done for comic relief, so therefore has to have some relevance to comic relief in Mise en scene etc. As you can see, there are red noses in the video which shows this. There is also close ups of each girl in the girl band, and they are each portrayed in a different way to one another, for example one is a cheerleader and the other is a sailor. Each girl member also has a certain colour to recognise them with. For example one has yellow, one has red etc. This is fairly common in a pop genre music video. There is no specific dance routine in this video, which is slightly unusual, but as the video is for comic relief this is probably why.

A good example of a pop video which shows The Saturdays all as individuals is the video 'Up' which portrays each of them in a different way yet again by colours, in this instance referring to mise en scene, it is shown by the different colours of their leggings and sunglasses. This video shows a more prominent dance routine than the comic relief one but yet again shows close ups of each member of the band and shows clear characteristics of a pop music video genre.

Comparison Britney Videos

Here is a video done in after effects, which compares the two Britney videos shot by shot. We did the same for our Lego life on mars sequence earlier in the year, in order to compare the videos and show how the shots match up. I think they match up very well, and some shots match up better than other.

In final cut, I put the original britney video at the bottom timeline and stretched our clips of britney and the shots to match the same time. Matt helped me with the editing, because I found editing really hard and difficult to do the video shot by shot. Overall, I think the videos match up well.

Britney spears 'Hit me baby one more time' music video edit

Above is my final Britney spears hit me baby one more time video, done shot by shot for the first minute of the sequence. As you can see from the above video, almost all the group took part and we worked as a team, with some having managerial roles while others smaller roles such as location scout, choreographer etc.

I found this video to be very similar to the original, but it was quite hard to edit, and in the end match the music with the video. This lip syncing was a lot harder than previous lip syncing tasks, (such as Dizzee Rascal), and this was mainly due to the video being a shot by shot remake.

Overall, I think the task and the editing went well, with me finding editing as a harder part than shooting, and my role within the group was to be a choreographer of the dance along with Philippa and Ash. However, we ended up short of time and this meant we did not have a lot of time to learn the dance moves, although Philippa had a dance move sheet which helped a lot.

Best lip syncing and variety of shots music video

However, the most effective music video I have seen is the one posted below, the video is from Coombe girls school in London, who teach A level and GCSE media.

It is a remake of the 'Katy Perry - Hot N' Cold' song. The lip syncing is exceptionally good and the video works extremely well with the video.

The range of different camera shots and angles enables this video to never be boring as there is so much to watch while the music plays.

There is 9 different camera shots and angles which give the video a wide variety of shots. I hope to have the same variety of shots in my music video as I think this is what makes it effective, and after reflecting on the Dizzee Rascal video i did, a wider range of shots is essential as the same shots can become boring.

Each of the shots is shown to the left and as you can see there is a wide variety of them, the most I have seen in all the student videos I have looked at.

I overall like this video the most as it has an immense amount of camera angles, the lip syncing works excellently, and the character in the video performs well and is confident - which is also vital to pull off an effective music video.