Textual Research

Mini Textual Analysis

This is the part of the course of which we started from and this was to make an analysis on piece of music and there video, showing what we thought of them. This had to include the genre, the length, what we liked and disliked, they were all of a different standard to each other.

Song: Rope
Artist: Foo Fighters
Length: 4:23
Type: Performance
Personal score: 9
Overall score: 9
Comment: I liked how the band stayed in time with the entire song and did not miss a beat especially with the lip synching. For some bands a whole video of performance does not work but for this band it does.

Song: The man who can't be moved
Artist: The Script
Length: 4:00
Type: Narrative/ Performance
Personal Score: 8
Overall Score:7
Comment: There was plenty use of shots within this video but it clear to me that the main does lip synch well into this video. But the story of the video is very clear and relates to the song completely.

Song: Fat Lip
Artist: Sum 41
Length: 2:58
Type: Performance/ Concept
Personal Score: 8
Overall Score: 8
Comment: This is a very good video because the way that the band had set out to perform in a skate park is like they are actually performaing in that area, which makes all the better when there are people doing stunts around them.

Song: A view from the afternoon
Artist: Artic Monkeys
Length: 3:38
Type: Performance
Personal Score: 9
Overall Score: 8
Comment: Even though I feel like the could of been more people there also performaing along side this drummer, I found it to be a good video as the drummer kept in time with the song and i like how this video shows the progression.

Song: Rubber Lover
Artist: Marmaduke Duke
Length: 1:59
Type: Concept
Personal Score: 10
Overall Score: 10
Comment: I think the song itself is a brilliant song in it's own rights but I believe that the ramdom video that goes along side it, is even more brilliant because it challenges normal videos.

Song: No One Knows
Artist: Queens of the Stone Age
Length: 4:13
Type: Concept/ Perfomance
Personal Score: 9
Overall Score: 9
Comment: I believe this bizarre video although it needs a few little tweaks is good because of the way the perfomance part links in well with the concept even though they have nothing in common.

Song: Losing My Religion
Artist: REM
Length: 4:28
Type: Performance
Personal Score: 8
Overall Score: 7
Comment: I think that the song is really good but I like how the perfomance shows the lead guitarist playing the tune to the exact points, but there are times in the video that could be considered to be narrative or concept, from a certain point of view.

Song: Rolling In the Deep
Artist: Adele
Length: 3:48
Type: Performance/ Concept
Personal Score: 7
Overall: 6
Comment:

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Analysis

Sum 41- Pieces

The video starts off with the music beginning before the distorted frame is shown clear, revealing the lead singer of the band sitting in a dark room by him self, on a red chair. This first says to me that his life at that moment is quite dreary and that he is feeling quite depressed, but with the colour of the chair could represent a glimpse of change or even hope but just as much be foreboding of some form of danger. The scene starts to cut across to a blurred overlook of city lights and even footage of passing underneath lamp posts. These show the glimpse of hope yet again as it keeps cutting back to the lead singer sitting by himself, this again is emphasised by have the ceiling lights in a dark tunnel, filmed as the camera passes underneath.

The lead singer starts to sing as the camera centres on him, but the video still gives off the thought of his dark gloomy life as it still cuts to establishing shots of buildings in the middle of the night. The singer then leaves his home and starts to walk outside dressed in dark clothing giving us more a sense that his sad and that he at this point wishes to fade into the back ground of the darkness filled city. As he progresses from place to place the song starts to pickup in the back ground showing that he is starting to feel better about himself and his loneliness as shown with, “in my soul”. The lead singer shows that he is “better off on my own”, meaning that he does not care for anyone because no ones cares for him and he likes it the way it is, because the person that he is singing about had previously made him distraught.

A van with a glass window in it drives past the lead singer with the scene of a beach inside it, filled with three occupants, the writing on the van says, “The Perfect Vacation”. This could mean a multiple things with the singer, it could mean how he hates how everyone is always talking about the perfect way of things and the way a perfect life should go but the singer does not see that as reality and looks the other way. This could also mean that he did everything that he could for his wife when they were together and that he even took her to the most perfect of places to go on a vacation but that eventually blowing up in his face.

Another identical van drives past the singer after, the camera zooms in on the couple that is there, but it is mainly focused on their hands cutting a cake together. The camera then widens out to reveal that it is newly married man and wife together in the van, advertising, “The Perfect Night”, the background to this one is darker with a glitter ball shining over the walls to show a theme of a reception hall. The man and wife are shown to be happy within, are shown to be taunting the singer in a way as the truck is going slower so that the couple are shown to be in the his sight. This could represent how the singer had tried giving his wife the perfect wedding along with the night by doing the best that he could of but it was for nothing in his mind because he again ignores the van as to say that no night or even marriage that will happen is ever perfect. The camera pans along the road as the singer gets to the end of the chorus line with “on my own” again, but the van stays on route with the singer through the bridge of the guitar rhythm and singer shouts “on my own” this time as to say that is what he would like to be, making sure everyone leaves him be, which is what the van shows to do as it moves on.

The video cuts to a scene of a close family sitting round a table having their dinner, trying to show the harmony of a perfect family together, but it revealed that this another van filled showcase that is driving past the lead singer. But this is not trying to show at this point of what he had, but what he has missed out on now that he is divorced, as the caption read “The Perfect Family”, this fading back to the lead singer who has tried “to be perfect”, as to say that he did eventually want a life that was like this and did not want it to go the way that it did. The happy family could be a portrait of what he thought he would be like when he was older, the ideal family to go along with the ideal life according to his books. The family seem to mock the singer as they laugh at him while they drive past in the van, and toast to one another in harmony with no sign of resent in their minds. In the same scene another van goes across, another look at something that the singer thinks that he doesn’t have but at the same time does not want, and that is the “Perfect Body”. The four people on the inside look as if they are working their hardest to achieve what the lead singer thinks of an impossible goal. All of the people seem to have smiles on their faces as if they enjoy doing what they do which makes me think that this again is another thing of a fake joy, because no one is ever that happy about trying to be fit and healthy. The lead singer again ignores them as to say that he does not care about having the perfect body because he has no interest in working out is happy the way he is and that he has no one to make it like that for because all he wants to be is by himself.

At the end we see that the lead singer is back comfy is his red chair in his dark home, the camera is focused in on the lead singer’s face as he finishes the song by saying that he is better off “on my own”. His home is immediately lit up and we can see the contours of the room perfectly as the camera zooms out from the lead singers face and even pivots while zooming out. This reveals, as the camera zoomed out, that the lead singer is in a van identical to the ones that had taunted him earlier, but this is designed in his own way of his home. The writing is meant to say, the “Perfect Life”,  but the “f” has etched away leaving the writing on to say the “Perfect Lie” as to say all those people he had seen even his own at this point was a lie and that no life at all is perfect.

Video Clips

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zblbytU310

CD Covers