Textual Analysis of a Music Video: Lostprophets 'Shinobi Vs Drangon Ninja'

Lostprophets - Shinobi VS. Dragon Ninja - Music Video - The funniest videos are a click away

Above is 2001 video for 'Shinobi Vs Dragon Ninja' by rockers Lostprophets. The video is based on the top level of a multi-story car park in an urban city. This setting connotes that the band is popular in the cool urban underground. The video is mostly made up of the live performance of the band and the surrounding crowd dancing and 'moshing' to the music. The band is performing at day time, with naturalistic lighting used to create a sense of reality about the performance.

The editing of this production is very synchronous to the pace of the song. When the big riffs and when the chorus is played, the editing is extremely quick, with shots only last one or two seconds at the most. These shots are made up mostly of the band playing, either close ups of the singer, Ian Watkins, or of the band playing their instruments. After the second chorus, the song slows down. As a consequence, the editing and shot timing changes. During this period, many slow motion shots are used to create the slow pace of this part of the song. However, this doesn't last long as the pace picks up again and the editing becomes even quicker, with shots last hundreds of a second. One shot that conveys the pace and beat of this song is at 6 seconds. This shot is a tracking shot of the audience running to the band. The tracking is very quick, while the girl in focus is sprinting past the camera. This shot is just before the music starts with all the instruments. I like this shot as it shows the path of the song and the pace of which it will go at. Also, I think is a great looking shot for the video.

Another way to show the energy of the band is through the audience. When the song is being played, the crowd are very energetic along with the band themselves. The target audience for the Lostprophets would be teenagers, from the ages of 14-24. This would be because of the style of music, which is mostly listened to by this age range. The energetic and frantic pace of this band is also needed in by the audience to create a good audience, hence the young looking crowd in the video.

To be honest, this video has no narrative structure or meaning to the song. For the first half of the video, all you see is the crowd running in there masses to the top level of the car park and the band playing the song. In the second half of the song, skateboarders are used to keep the attention of the audience. You see the skaters pass through the car park before reaching the top level. The ellipsis transition is used as you assume that they skate through the car park, only seeing them briefly move through it. One part of the video that I like is when the skaters are used in the slow motion shots. Slow motion skateboarding shots look excellent and defiantly add something to a very one-sided video. Skateboarders are used in this production as it is a stereotypical social group for this band. This genre of music, rock/metal/emo, was all the rage with skateboarders at the start of the 21st century.

The only type of transition used in this video is the cut. This is a simple yet effective transition for this kind of music video. It helps to create a sense of tempo about the video. By the end of the video, this start to become a little boring and repetitive.

Textual Analysis of a Music Video: Oren Lavie 'Her Morning Elegance'

The video above is by Oren Lavie. The song, 'Her Morning Elegance', uses Stop Motion to create a sense of movement. This is a very unconventional way of creating movement. Stop motion is created by taking thousands of still shots and changing the scene a small amount, thus producing a video when putting all of these images together. This technique is very effective in creating a kind of dreamlike feeling, which produces a better narrative using the various props used.

The Directors, Oren Lavie, Yuval & Merav Nathan, use the stop motion to bring in the audience to watch the video. The video has a weak narrative, thus using the unusual and clever technique to keep the audience interested. Furthermore, there is little variety to the camera angles used. The master shot is used for a majority of the video, which is a high angle medium shot of the bed. Apart from this shot, there are a few close ups of the woman and that is about all.

The video starts with the sun rising and shinning through the woman's bedroom window, like she is waking up from a dream. After that, the bed that she is lying on becomes the background for all of the shots, as a high angle shot is used throughout the film. As the narrative progresses, the woman starts to 'walk' in her 'dream'. This is created by taking still shots of the woman lying on he side, like she is walking normally. At this point, the man enters 'her dream', running with her side by side. The video uses pillows above the woman and man's head as clouds. These pillows change from white to grey to represent the change of mood in the narrative. Furthermore, the bed sheets change for white to black when see dives into the sea. All of props that are used in the video are from a normal bedroom. Items such as t-shirts are used as birds flying in the wind and blue bed sheets to create the sea. This idea for changing the scene is very effective as the audience can distinguish quickly that she has dived into the see thanks to her movement and the use of socks as fish.

The target audience for Oren Lavie's style of music is broad. This genre of music, a cross between pop and classical, can appeal to all age groups but is most likely to focus on the older age groups. I think that the age range for Oren Lavie would normally be between the ages of 25-40. I think that this style of music would be listened to by both male and female, but more by females as they usually prefer softer and slower music, which this is.

I believe that this video is an excellent piece of media. The use of stop motion really does set this apart from the norm of music video, involving a live performance and narrative. The problem with this video is that video is more interesting than the song. I think this is a major flaw as this video is remembered for the video, when trying to promote the song to the audience. This video has had over 7 million viewings on YouTube (11th October 2009) and most of these views are thanks to the techniques used. Looking at the past 10 comments for Lavie's song, only one person mentioned something the song, while the rest commented on the video techniques. However, after researching the artist further, i have found that this song is the most popular song on the album. On the US version of iTunes, this is easily the most popular song on the album 'The Opposite Side of the Sea'.