Friday, 23 September 2011
Example - Stay Awake - Music Video analysis
Example is an English singer and rapper and this video, ‘Stay Awake’ is off of his third album, ‘Playing in the Shadows’. The video was first released on YouTube in July 2011 and was directed by Adam Powell, produced by Nero and is both a performance and conceptual style video. The main themes of this music video are the music industry and how it has influenced the younger generations with drinks and drugs and the fact that every year the children being influenced are of a much younger age than the year before. The song questions what the music industry may be doing to younger generations and is shown through the lyrics: ‘If we don't kill ourselves, we'll be the leaders of a messed up generation’ and ‘Did we take it too far’.
Goodwins 6 point analysis on music videos helps to identify key areas that can be outlined when analysing a music video. The first point is aimed at genre characteristics and how a music video either conforms with these characteristics or deviate away from the norm. ‘Stay Awake’ falls under the genre of ‘Electro House’ and the characteristics of such a genre are things such as, intense dancing and rave with bright lights or filmed in clubs to show how the audience react to it and to get a full insight into the true way this song is meant to be heard. This video from Example deviates away from these characteristics and instead we see only himself, as the performer, reacting to the beats of the song.
Throughout the video, there are stereotypical images of younger generations, to illustrate the type of people that the song has suggested the music industry has influenced. These images are mainly negative and of teenagers in hoodies, out on the street with large speakers and out partying, to display the meaning in the lyrics. The image also appears during the lyric, ‘messed up generation’, to define the idea further.
Because of the theme of drugs and how the music industry has influenced these, an Alice in Wonderland theme is also prominent throughout the video. Wonderland is s fictional, fantasy place that the character Alice visited in her dreams. When people are on drugs they can hallucinate or create fantasy worlds, such as the one in Alice in Wonderland and the video portrays this with iconic images of tea cups, doors and white rabbits that are all recognisable images from Alice in Wonderland. All this images are shown in a unique and quirky way, exaggerating their purpose. For example, the white rabbit is shown by having a person wearing a rabbit head mask skipping through a forest in slow motion. The half human-half rabbit effect, as well as the slow motion, help to emphasise the effect of drugs and illustrate the themes in the song.
Alice in Wonderland also helps to add intertextuality as the story was originally a book before being made into several films at different times.
At the start of the music video, different images appear on screen, changing with the beat of the song; a link between lyrics and visuals as featured as the second point in Goodwins analysis. The music is gradually building up , with the image changing to every second beat in the bass line before finishing the build up of the introduction on the performer lifting his arms up as if lifting up the music before it drops and cuts to a close up of him. The video is also edited around the music during the bridge of the song that is slower than the rest of the song and this is shown as the movement of the images and cuts between them are slower than they were during the verses.
Through the showing of the performer, the video is not only conceptually based, but also performer based. The unique ways of showing Alice in Wonderland add to the conceptual side of the video, with the bright colours and quirky costumes. However, none of the performance by the artist or any other parts of the video shows anything sexual and doesn’t display any signs of making any of the female characters appear on sexual display, which can be a generalised representation of women in most music videos.
The actors in the video also represent the generation of people that are mentioned within the themes of the music video and meaning behind the lyrics, showing a stereotypical view of the younger generation of this country. It is also a representation of how people of this age tend to be featured in and around the media more than older people, especially within music videos and how much more of an influence this age group tends to have on an audience.
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