analysis of two contemporary music videos

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

The shots in sledgehammer are almost the same all the way through. Although the beginning is strange, it involves what goes on inside the body and cuts to shots going more to the outer body, so arterie, veins, blood vessels, eye, mouth, ear, eyes and then zooms out to the face. this has no relevance of what the song is about although the shots do cut well with the beat. I suppose you could say that it gives a more extreme indepth of the artist. The does continue to go more out through out the song, it goes from a close up of his face so you can see the artist performing the song, to a medium close up of the artist when it hits the chorus. The video is filmed in medium close up most of the way through which I think is good because the audience can see the artist performing the song and there can be entertaining effects going on in the background which there is, to grab the audience attention. Bit like radiohead "no suprises" whwere it is filmed all in close but the lead singer has to his breath under water for a minute, somthing extra to grab the audience attention.

Technically through most of this video there isn't a set there are effects going on behind him. It's a very colourful video, the lightings bright which suits the song because it's up beat and wacky. The only time when there is a set is near the end of the song, it's a tiled floor with an eventful wall with paintings as windows which look like effects. I think this is intesting because it makes you think were they actually using effects in the first place, was it just an animated look a like wall.

The clear use of interesting editing and lyrics and visuals in this are what ever the artist sings it appers in the back ground as effects. So for example "you could have a big dipper" a black bored turns up behind him with a moving big dipper chalked on it. Or "you could have a steam train" a steam train goes around his head. I think this is handy because the lip syncing is pixelated, so if the audience are finding it difficult to lip read, then it's going on right in front of them. With the editing and the music, there is a little dance routine which where the artist stamps his feet to the drum beat, one foot goes down for the bass drum, the other for the snare. The artist has had to be speeded up in order to match the beat.

funny genre this song, it's a combination of Jazz/rock/pop. Can't see anythin in the video which relates to Jazz or rock but pop yes. Apart from it being clourful and flamboyent, at the end of the video the artist is made of stars. This had ben shown in other pop videos of it's time like "tainted love" by soft cell.

This video is mostly concept based with also a lot of performance involved of the artist lip syncing and dancing. There is concept stuff going on at the same time but when the song goes into the solo, it's just the concept based stuff going on.

The colourful backgrounds, later on in the song do reperesent the artist as being colourful and flamboyent as well whn the artist is trying on different coloured shirts.

I feel the intended audience for this video would be both male and female, who are middle aged and around when this video was made. Or possibally now, the age range could creep into mid sixties due to the age relation. So that audince will feel it's right to like that video.

A-ha - take on me

The first thing that grabs my attention in this video are the comic book picturers and the use of the camera with them, I didn't think you could zoom out of a picture and make it look well focused. Not only that but also the combination of cuts and zoom outs of the comic book camera to the beat of the music. To begin with it just a combinaton of exteme close ups of the pictures but to give it more of a variety, it zooms out to the sound of the keyboared. I think this is interesting because if you just had continuous cuts of extreme close ups it would eventually get boring. One interesting shot I liked was when they were following the couple when they are getting chased through the commic book beause it is all rotoscoped and I would think that is pretty tough to do, so it's good that they took a challenge and made it look good.

The set looks interesing because some of it is rotoscoped and some of it isn't. For example when the actress and lead singger are looking at each other through a window, one side of the set is rotoscoped and the other isn't. It's only when they switch the camera to the other side of the mirror, the set switches to being the oppisites. I like the way they have taken somthing which would look boring, because to people looking at each other through a window will get boring after a few seconds, and made it look clever and eye catching. The lighting doesn't light the set that well, probably because they are trying to make the rotoscoping more eye catching.

The only relationship I can find with the lyrics and the visuals are when the lead singer says " i'll be coming for you anyway", the lead singer pops up at the end of the video again. This is a good thing for two reasons, one it shows there is a narrative and two, it's a happy ending, which is a pround thing to see because if you had a sad ending, the audience would turn away from that video and song and would not want anything to do with it.

rotoscoping you could say is intertextuality, due to the fact that it's old fashioned and it had been going way before the video was made.

This genre of music is rock pop parts in the video which go with that are the quick editing, the costumes look like very rock pop style and the instruments. The key boared would reperesent pop and then guitar reperesent rock and so do the drums.

Most of it is narrative based but there is a little bit of perfomance where the band are playing behind window, also switching from rotoscope to normal when the peds down. Most is the women getting pulled into a comic book by a man she likes, them being in the comic book, women waiter screwing up the comic book, couple getting chased by racers, her ging out of the comic book again, rushing home then meeting up with the man which she liked in the comic book in the real world.

I think this video promotes the band in a way of saying no to flash, not to boring. The reason I say this is beacause most of this video is rotoscoped and the only colours they use are black and white which are normal colours. judging by this you could say the band are not stupid, there not arrogent, there not flamboyent, there not weird, there a normal well behaved band. Plus the clothes that they whear are not flash or boring, there just on the money.

Obvious audience for this band would be people from Norway becasue that's where the band are from and back in there day you could say a young audience of males and females aged from early teens to mid twenties. Although now because there older, older audiences could creep into mid thirties to mid fourties because of the age relation.