This is where I went last Thursday. The main reason it was brilliant: I sort of almost met Lindy Heymann. Lindy Heymann is quite a hero of mine. The reason for this is because she made this:
which is quite clearly, a work of genius.
This is relevant because I intend to make a music video for my coursework. Before attending this session I had already had some quite defined ideas (influenced not lightly by Heymann's work) but now I think I've got the whole thing planned out in my head.
The topic I want to focus on is gender representation- this includes looking at feminism and queer theory, and the result could potentially be my personal vitriol towards today's trend of oversexed pets of MTV in video format, or maybe just something that looks a bit confusing.
What I'd like to say here is that I hope my ideas are communicated well enough, but the realist in me tells me it is much more likely that I'd be worrying about whether the thing will work in any sense of the phrase 'music video'. After all, my effort last year, a trailer for a youth drama, was...at best, interesting. What can I say, my heart wasn't in it.
That is the past. Onwards and upwards to this new idea...what follows should be a thought process comprised of influences and ideas.
To the subject of Lindy Heymann: These are my thoughts on The Drowners and how it might influence me.
The first thing I notice about this video is how the camera is never still. A recurring theme is the setting spinning while the character in the shot remains stationary, which increases the focus on the subject and gives you the impression of almost seeing the world from their point of view, but being able to see them at the same time.
The opening shot is the first example of this, where we see the girl's (Justine Frischmann) face in the middle of the spinning room. She does not appear to be holding the camera, which is what makes this effective. The background is a sort of neutral red and she appears to match this, wearing red and cream, and her features picked out in colours of the same scheme. This shot leads into the next which is the same, but the subject is now a boy, and the quickness of this sequence barely gives you time to register the difference. The next shot is of a figure that often comes back, and appears to be of indeterminate gender, and is covered in what looks like plaster dust, giving the impression of a living statue. After this we go to the scene of the band performing against a completely white background. Whenever we come back to this scene, the camera is always focused on Brett (Anderson, singer) so we have that idea of seeing things from his point of view once again. The camera zooms around everywhere, and you see moments of the other musicians behind him. At first we only see Brett and the guitarist, Bernard (who might also possibly be the boy from the beginning), and as the video goes on more elements of the band are introduced.
The scene then goes through the same sequence as the first, Justine, a similar shot of the boy, the living statue, the band, except this time showing different sections of each shot, and different angles of the scene. We begin to get the idea of the video's intention to create an ambiguous impression of not only gender but life form, as we are shown a shot of a girl made up to look like a doll, who could almost be a doll at this point. I like the way the video plays around with these ideas- you would have to watch it over and over again to figure out who exactly each character is.
When the vocals begin, we have once again the spinning camera from Brett's point of view. What is interesting here is that the band appear to be on a continuous circle, as the camera spins round we keep seeing each of them. At this point, the statue person, who currently appears to be female, mimes some of the words of the song.
This is when we are introduced to a new element of the video- two figures in an outdoor city setting, Brett in a suit and hat and Justine out of her spinning room. They appear to be walking around a greyscale city scene and it is hard to tell who is leading who, which is probably the point. This is also when we get some more focus on other band members- the camera slides round the edge of a guitar while the player turns himself. This gives the video much more movement- the band are always animated and so is the camera, often in an opposite direction, which saves the film from being completely photographic.
The next scene is, I feel, the defining scene of the whole video. The camera travels up the back of the living statue female figure who turns her head, and when the camera gets to the top the figure is now Anderson, shot in black and white to look like the statue and making exactly the same movement, and the camera travels back down to show the words 'do you believe in love there' at the moment they are sung. (This shows a simple but brilliant awareness of the music, which is obviously extremely important. The lyrics at this point are 'he writes the line, that wrote down my spine, says oh, do you believe in love there?' and I think interpreting that in such a literal way is extremely effective in this case. Had the lyrics and the nature of the band been a little less ambiguous, this probably wouldn't have worked, but here it gives perfect visuals that really add to the song. Later on I will talk about my feelings towards having lyrics in music videos.)
As the bridge instrumental moves, as does the video. I like the way that each shot here is in time with the music, moments like this put enough emphasis on the song for viewers to forever link it with the given visuals. The next shot shows Brett's back again with the same lyrics written on him, but in a different way, and this time in colour. This is the only part of the video I'm still unsure of. In some ways, the spinning room and still subject correspond well with the rest of the film, but I don't know if having the lyrics again puts too much emphasis on what was a completely perfect shot- but at the same time, this is from the point of view of someone who has seen the video a lot, and perhaps this is actually very effective for a first-time viewer if this were to be shown on television, as the speed of the first scene might prevent them from noticing this part of the song.
The chorus of the song mainly focuses on the band in the white room, and towards the end of it we revisit the doll-like person. This person is now holding a mannequin wearing the clothes Anderson was wearing in the outdoor scenes. This shows that the doll-like person is now human, and holding a person who was represented by a human, and is now not.
As the video moves through other angles on all the shots I have mentioned above, a representation I find very interesting is this: Brett is often filmed from above, an angle that is now commonplace in popular music videos with female subjects. Typically it represents vulnerability, and the only female who seems to firmly steer away from this angle is Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga has also, in her video for Bad Romance, made a reference to this with a shot of her apparently crying, shot almost from above but not quite, but completely at odds with her angle in the rest of the video, which appears to be (among many other less decipherable things) a comment on a more aggressive approach to romance, and depicting the female as being in control. Like Brett Anderson, Lady Gaga does seem fond of playing with gender roles and challenging typical imagery in her music videos (see Alejandro or LoveGame in which some very Suede-esque shots of women becoming men as the camera moves feature, as well as plenty of soldiers in fishnet tights), although it has to be said that the comparisons end there.
As well as this 'female' shot of Brett, we also see lots of scenes of the characters who walk around the city, shot from below. A memorable frame is where Justine stands at the top of some stairs and the camera looks up at her, which implies a more masculine representation of her, and shows power. These stereotypes of camerawork may seem a little obvious, but watching a music channel for ten minutes will no doubt show you that directors no longer feel the need to be subtle about regressive imagery.
The last new thing we see is quite an unexpected cut to some black and white live footage of the band when the guitar solo kicks in. My thoughts on this are that it shouldn't work, but it does.
This section flashes between lots and lots of different angles, which I think is what ties it in with the rest of the video.
The video ends in a whirl of scenes showing Brett in a suit becoming Justine in a suit and Justine becoming what looks like a papier mache doll, and the doll-person in the blonde wig with the mannequin who looks a bit like Brett in a suit, and it would seem that the papier mache doll's head falls off as Justine in the suit holds it and turns into Brett in a suit and the messages previously derived from the video lose me a little- this vaguely chaotic climax to the surreality brings the video to an almost grinding halt, but all is rescued as the last few bars of the song are a (finally!) still camera on the black and white live video.
What I wish to take from this is anything from the following:
a. The brilliantly planned use of colour.
b. The simplicity of the band on a white background and the effectiveness of the costume.
c. The well-planned make-up to compliment the setting
d. The duality of the visual with the song, the understanding of the music.
e. The challenges to gender representation.
So- that's the basis of my ideas. The possibly overly long analysis helped me figure out the logistics of my plan for my own video. Hurrah, tea and cake for all. Seeing as this is already far too long, I'm going to make a new post for the next stages, which will hopefully be shorter.
Over and out.
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