Tuesday 12 June 2012

Personal Music Video Analysis - Negative

Part II of me expressing my over-opinionated beliefs in regards to music videos. Here we go again. Again, this is focusing on the video itself, not necessarily the song - though I'm bound to point out what I hate music-wise too, because I'm like that.

Going to do these on a video-by-video basis this time as opposed to categories so I can critically analyse what we see throughout each video as opposed to just picking up on one thing.

Just Like A Pill - P!nk

Biggest gripe with this? The redundant transitions from one shot to the next. This is especially apparent during the choruses as it cuts from one shot to... exactly the same shot, with some flashy pan transition thing. Sure, the special effects are kind-of impressive (by 2001 standards, anyway) but this is supposed to be a finished product, not a tech demo.

The other problem I have with this is that it's trying too desperately hard to be dark and edgy with the black and dark brown colours. The song itself isn't anything beyond a typical throwaway pop song, so the video's attempts to convince me otherwise just aren't working.

On the topic of trying desperately hard to be dark and edgy...

Fallen Angels - Black Veil Brides

This video is obviously trying to appeal to its target audience (twelve year olds with attitude problems) by promoting the idea of being individualistic, by doing original things such as dressing entirely in black and covering their faces in makeup, which totally hasn't been done before by the likes of Alice Cooper/KISS/Marilyn Manson etc..

As with the P!nk video, they're trying to up their image to be "cool" by making them look dark, when in actual fact their music is nothing more than Busted with a second bass drum. Honestly, I don't mind a -bit- of creative artistic license in regards to fitting in with the genre, but this just looks ridiculous.

Also that last shot is completely original and in no way borrowed from the Halo Reach promotional art.

I Want To Break Free - Queen

As much as I love Queen, there's no way I can deny this video is terrible. I think it's safe to say that cross dressing in anything is going to look stupid, and even when you consider the Coronation Street references it just looks ridiculous. Sorry, I just can't appreciate this in any way (except for the song itself which is fab).

Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard [US]

The problem I have with this isn't apparent in the far superior UK version. If there's one thing that bugs me it's when a great deal of the video consists of concert footage - trying to sync the concert video to the studio record is always going to require a lot of creative cutting, which pretty much always looks awkward.

---

Also I should note that I don't hate what would appear to be the obvious choice, Friday. Why? Because it fits into the same category as the Powerman 5000 video I mentioned in the last post, in that it's HILARIOUSLY TERRIBLE. Everything about this video is bad, right from the badly animated post-it notes at the start, to the waving of the arm thing that looks out of place, to the girl dancing extremely awkwardly around 1:16, to the slightly creepy unnamed rapper going on about following a school bus over a really poorly edited in background. This is so terrible it makes me laugh every time, which makes it worth watching.

Will edit in the image links later on, to make this blog SHINIER.

-HM.

No comments:

Post a Comment