Radiohead- Street Spirit (fade out)

Hi, here is my first textual analysis (the 1 ive been promising for ages but havnt yet put up). I wrote this up in the pc room during todays lesson aswell as the kings of leon webpage analysis, but Radiohead first.

Mise-en-scene
The first thing you see when watching this video is Thom Yorke(the lead singer). This straight away draws attention onto him and shows the audience who is the main person from the band. This is known as 'star status'. Thom is positioned in a cross bearing manner and then on the cut of the music coming in he starts to fall. This is an intertextual reference to religion and is a running theme throughout the video. He stays in the same position even after he has fallen when he is on the lying on the roof of the car. This star status of Thom is hevily present throughout- the number of facial blury close ups of Thom during the video is surely over 100 and is easily the most used shot. Also there are a lot of shots of the whole band (Thom positioned front like expected) together like you would expect when they play live yet they have no instruments or gear (eg amps, microphones). This is pretty unique, a lot of videos have some aspect of performance. The location (a trailer park) is also an interesting choice- theres no link between it and the music/lyrics- it seems random. Another shot which appears regularly is nuns jumping. This runs with the religion theme and they seem 'angel-like'. The first time they appear is the same time as the violin comes in, another example of a action at the point of the music changing like when Thom starts falling. The reference to a dreamland is apparent- mainly through all the random things which occur in the video and also down to the fact that much of it is in slow motion. For example the 1 random shot of a tree with the night sky in the background which focuses on the exact moment a triangle instrument is struck. There are also 2 other examples of a shot representing a change in the music- the first 1 is the dogs chain moving on as the bass comes in and the final 1 is the smashing of the glass near the end which occure when the notes played on the guitar change slightly- the glass shows the climax of the song. Right at the end, just the same as the beginning Thom is shown in a cross bearing position but instead of starting to fall like at the start- he starts to rise up- signalling the end of the song and that it has gone full loop.

Sound
At the start their is no musical sound just diagetic sound. This is a wind howling/thunder noise but it blends out as the music come in. The use of the howling wind immediately suggests that he is high up. All the instruments come in as something is shown happening, I have already mentioned this above but another example is the running or jumping shown finishes at the same time as the vocals finish. There isnt much link between the lyrics and the visuals - the only 2 being after he says the line 'before we all go under' the next shot is of him swinging a stick under another him who is in slow motion. The stick is going under him. The other use is when he sings 'i fade out' and a close up of his face is shown but is layered over by another close up shot of his face. Technically the shot doesn't fade out- it is layered over the top of the original.

Right this takes longer than i thought- even just to elaborate on and copy up from my draft I did at school today. Ill put up editing, lighting and camerawork later. Ive also got some stills fro this music video to post up so you can see some of the aspects I have been talking about. Oh also I almost forgot- this is why you couldnt find me Mrs Bannon during todays lesson- i was putting my analysis's into order/note form and then looking for stills.