As promised yesterday here is my analysis of their video.
Mise-en-scene
The first thing the audience sees is a long distance shot of the whole band which zooms in slightly. At this point you can't tell who is who or even what band it is. The next shot however clarifies this as it is a close up of the lead singer of the band- kele okereke. This shows the audience who he is, and indeed the band they are watching and draws attention to him. This is star status, which occurs throughout, the most shots are of him, most of which are close ups. Mixed in with the opening couple of shots of Kele, we see the band as a whole a couple of times. From this the audience can clearly see that they are not positioned in a typical way, they are all facing each other in a semi circle sort of shape. This is not how they would normally stand when performing, which is clearly what they are about to do. I know this as I have seen them live and they conform to the conventional lead singer front middle, lead guitarist and bassist to the side of him and the drummer behind. It is a performance based music video and when the band begin to play and sing there is a obvious link between the music and the visuals The audience hear the song at the same time that they are playing it. Also when each instrument comes in the audience see a close up of that instrument, for example the guitar and the drums. One thing that is noticable however is that they are playing but only have instruments, there is no 'gear', for example there are no microphones or amps. The location of the video has no link with the music or the lyrics, it just seems like they are in a dark, black room. The whole video is of just the band playing so nothing really happens in it. At the end it is the opposite of the start, it is a long shot of the band zooming out but goes further and longer than at the start until the band disappear.
Sound
At the beginning there is non diagetic sound which is the mix of voices and sounds. This sound is not being created by the band or there surroundings so this is why it is non diagetic. This sound is part of the music however, it does appear on the song on the single and the album the song is taken from. All of the early shots of Kele, before the band start playing apper as a tuba is heard. This is a very small link between the music and the visuals and is hardly noticable. When the band play this is diagetic sound because they can hear themselves playing and also the instruments come in as we see them. This is another link between the music and the visuals.
Lighting
There is very little going on in terms of lighting within the video. The band are under what appears to be one big spotlight in a completely dark, black room. This is obviously non naturalistic lighting. Finally there is a small use of shadow. This is noticable on the extreme close ups of Kele's face. This shadowing is very natural, basically due to his nose and the angle of the light source.
Editing
Right, the video starts with the screen completely black, which then fades out to show the band in the distance. From then on every cut is a straight cut until the end which is done opposite of the start, it fades to black. Cutting wise they occur very frequently. There are around 200 cuts throughout the video and it isn't the longest of songs, it lasts for less than 3mins 30secs. Their also very much linked with the tempo and rhythm of the music, the main body of the video is fast, however the start and end are slower. Also it even changes when the tempo and rhythm changes slightly in the main body. There are some parts which are very very fast, in some parts I lost count because they were happening too quickly for me to keep up. An example of this is when all of the instruments are playing- at one point it cuts between all of them, so thats 5 cuts but it only happens in the space of between 2 and 3 seconds. Cuts also happen when the music changes, for example when Kele's guitar comes in we see it. Instruments and key pieces of the song come in as we see them all the way through. The video is in a conventional, linear order, however some shots reoccur/ are repeated throughout, this being most obvious with some of the shots of the drums, like the shot from straight above it. Nearly all of it is also in normal speed apart from a very short slow motion section of the main guitarist and bassist at the climax of the song. Finally quite possibly the most obvious thing but something i very nearly overlooked is the size of the video, it is tiny. The aspect ratio is smaller than even the average sized letter box size, it's like a mini one.
Camerawork
The first slow is a very long shot which zooms in. Even at its closest point its still impossible to make out who each person is or what band it is. This is the opposite at the end, it zooms out. The next shot is a close up of Kele who actually walks into the frame. This is the first of many close up shots. Not only do close ups occur frequently, extreme close ups also occur often, mainly of Kele or the instruments. Throughout, the use of many angles, views and frame positioning are also very apparent to the audience. Throughout the video i believe there is not 1 shot which is directly in front of its object. Shots are taken from everywhere; above, behind, high angles from the side and front are a few examples. Theres so many that the difference between many shots are only very small with a very small angle or a slight frame position change. There is a crash whip at around 50 seconds into the video into a close up of Kele. Throughout the film the concentration is mainly on Kele and secondly the drummer. These two nearly always appear alone in a shot whereas the other two generally appear together in a shot. There are also no facial shots of the other two. Also throughout there are various shot differences ranging from extreme close ups to very long distance shots and zooms and pans are present. One thing noticable is the positioning of the band members in the frame. Kele is always to the right of the frame and the lead guitarist is always to the left with the other two in between. This is juxtaposition and adds to the concept of them all facing each other in a semi circle and makes the audience feel like their there directly in the centre. Finally because of the constant use of angles none of the band ever look directly into the camera. This moves away from the performance video convention of direct address to the audience and may well be a play on star status.
Right that is the main textual analysis of Hunting For Witches, I will now analyse it using Goodwin's Six, postmodernism and finally themes. I will do this in a seperate post.
