Thunder
Video analysis
This music video, like many others, creates a story as it goes on. It shows the adventures and activities of a group of young friends. This directly targets the demographic of the band and the genre in which they fall. The band is an American teen rock band from Massachusetts. Their target audience is from about 13-20. This is because in their music and videos, they allow younger people to look up to them and want to be like them, and because the slightly older group are doing similar things and having similar problems that they write about. In terms of ideal gender for their audience, it can go both ways. Young girls like them because they are in a band are a made to look very attractive in their videos, you can see this from some of the comments on the video on youtube. For example, lillycm13 (whose information states she is female) said “Been in love with BLG since 2006. Still in love with them in 2012 <3 They are all so gorgeous”. Also the band name is also attractive to a female audience; it shows them to be desirable. It may make young girls feel like the name is aimed at them.
There is a significant male audience as well. This is because all the band members are male, and all the things they sing about and show in their videos they may feel like they can relate too. For example ‘haroldvanify’, a male youtube user said “this song makes me think of my crush who ill probably never see again. i can’t stop thinking about her!!!”.
Throughout the video there are cross cuts between the story, and a performance. When the shots are of the band performing, they cut between long shots of the band and close ups of the members. They use the long shots here to show them all playing, they want to portray the image that they are genuine and that they play all there music and it isn’t created on a computer. They also want to show that they are all equal within the band and that the lead singer isn’t the only important member. However, being the lead singer it allows a connection with the audience to be made. This is where they use the close up shots. They use them on all the band members, but when they come to the lead singer, they show him singing looking directly into the camera which allows a direct connection to be made and the audience members to feel as though he is signing to them personally. This is very attractive to a female audience. These shots are all at very even angles. Normally, in music videos or any other type of film, they use camera angles to show dominance or weakness. I believe they use even angles to try and show their audience they are just like them, and the fact they are in a band doesn’t make them so different. Although there is some use of high anlge shots looking down on them, this has connotations of being the underdog and that young people are considered lower in society.
This is also suggested in the clothes they wear. They are all wearing incredibly casual clothes in both the performance and story shots, to further reinforce the point of being the same as their audience; it seems it is important for them to be represented in this way.
As well as the cross cutting, they have used other editing techniques to enhance the effect of this video. During the slower verses the cuts between shots are quite slow. But when the chorus comes the cutting speed greatly increases to replicate the pace of the song.
One of the main conventions and themes of the genre, is being young and rebellious. The story side of the video is exactly that. It starts with a long shot of a few friends driving around their town in a convertible car. The weather is beautiful, the car is amazing, its all their friends together. This is very cliché and appeals to the younger audience, mainly because it’s the classic teenage dream and its what they hope is in their future. It also allows them to look up to the characters.
this is unfinished.
No comments:
Post a Comment