Monday 12 October 2009

JB - Video Analysis 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwvpOtoxMZQ
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Product Analysis
Genre and Narrative

I have chosen the video Party In Your Bedroom by Cash Cash who are a pop punk/powerpop band. There are some identifiable conventions in this video that are conventions of a powerpop video such as the indie dress style. The members of the band are wearing tight T-shirts and tight jeans, except the drummer who seems to be wearing a comical vest shirt and the singer who is wearing retro sporting gear, which when looking at other videos of this genre we found to be a normal thing for bands of this nature. The conventional storyline is taking place, a love story set in a high school era. The love story consists of a geek and a attractive, popular female. In Hellogoodbye's video to Baby, it's fact, this story line is evident, which shows that this type of love story is used a lot. This video is mostly performance with some narrative added in. There is a slight notion of looking, for example there are many close ups of two dollar signs, $$. The bands name is Cash Cash, so this could be them giving the audience a sign. Also when the man who looks like a wannabe gangster walks into the room full of ladies, he seems to look at himself in the mirror whilst all the ladies leave. There is a slight link between the music and the visuals. For example when the jock is introduced and he shoulder barges the geek, when contact is made, it sounds like a bass drum is hit. When the wannabe called Sam walks upstairs to the room full of ladies the lyrics change to 'Upstairs all alone'. He is not alone at this point but he does later scare the ladies away so he does end up alone. Also the main lyric 'Party in your bedroom' is clearly shown throughout seeing as the video is set out as a party inside someone's entire house. Another conventional thing about the costume in this video is that there is a scene where a man walks into the party wearing a penguin costume. In many powerpop videos people seem to be wearing costumes such as a beer costume in the video Bonnie Taylor Shakedown by Hellogoodbye. This video seems to be more amplification becase the lyrics and visuals kind of mix. I would consider this video to be more for the bands promotion due to heavy performance shots and a lot of meat shots showing the singer.

Media Language
In this music video there are a lot of meat shots and close ups of the performers. This is to show a realism about the band and to show that they are serious musicians who do play their instruments. They use a lot of visual effects when editing, such as a close up of the man's jumper to a wipe into a close up of the singer. There is also a lot of editing where it misses out a few frames. These are used to make the video seem more visibly pleasing to the audience and also to make the shots act in time with the music and cuts. The cutting rate seems to be quite fast in this video. This is conventional to most powerpop videos seeing as powerpop is quite upbeat. There are also more mid shots in this video than other shots. This seems to be evident in many powerpop videos seeing as in other videos I have seen there are a lot of mid shots. The director has been showing us the main characters throughout by using a freeze frame and adding information about the characters as well as comical information about them too, also very stereotypical information such as the jocks future career to be a Quick stop worker. Quite a lot of this video seems to be filmed in handicam. This gives the video a realistic look and also the camera is able to move when the song gets more upbeat which gives a good effect to the video. This video is shot in a house where a party seems to be happening. This goes with the whole theme of the song. The characters seem to be dressed very stereotypically for the roles they are playing, and the band seem to be dressed like bands in their genre should be. There may be some intertextual references to popular culture like high school films and stereotypical television films like that. There are the main characters such as the geek, jock, the pretty girl, the boy who likes the pretty girl but she doesn't notice him, the drug addict and the wannabe cool person. These can all be seen in most American contemporary high school films/television shows.

Representation
The band are seen in this video as being quiet upbeat, lively and fun. This is shown in the video by us being able to see them dancing around, jumping around and having a good time. They all seem to have smiles on their faces which could show that they are grateful for how lucky they are to be successful in the music industry and could also show that they are a happy band. This can help to sell their music because it will show people that they are quite fun and cool and may make people who listen to their music feel that way too. Also the fact that they have used teenage themes and are shooting scenes of a party may make it sell more to a teenage audience because they may see this as fun and listening to this music may make them seem cooler. There are plenty of different social groups in this video. The geek is represented as quite shy, the butt of the jokes and is a very stereotypical geek via the way he is dressed. The jock is very stereotypical too because he is seen as very macho, for example when he does a chest bump with some other guy. He is also seen as being quite arrogant because when Jean Paul is talking to the girl he likes the jock just walks in front of him and starts talking to her. The wannabe cool man is seen as being a failure with the women and also seen as arrogant and vain, when he is looking at himself in the mirror. Jean Paul is seen as quite normal because he is dressed very contemporary and has a good attitude towards most things. The hippie/drug addict is seen as very laid back and doesn't seem to care about much. Men seem to be represented as quite in charge and macho in this video, This is seen when the jock seems to take control over most things. Women do seem to have a lot of control in this video though because the main aim for most of the guys in the video is to try to lure the ladies but the ladies seem to walk away from most of them, until the geek gets the woman at the end.

Institution and Audience
This music video would be consumed by more of an ambient audience because it seems to be a lot more performance based, so people would not need to tune in to a narrative. This would be viewed on channels such as Kerrang! Or MTV because it is quite popular. The record label would have played a huge part in this music video. The most likely would have funded the whole thing and done most of the casting, but I think the band would have come up with the ideas seeing as it is their music and they want to be represented in a way that suits them.

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