Inspirations & Ideas From Other Bands' Videos - Continued

Another band I looked at was Oasis. It was quite hard to actually get a couple of their videos, as they don't appear on any of the music websites.

 

Inspirations & Ideas From Other Bands' Videos

Even though I am mainly looking at The Verve as my main inspiration in my videos, I have still been looking at other bands in order to gain more ideas and other things such as shots, costume, etc.

One band in particular I looked at was Pulp. After having one of their songs in my original shortlist, I looked through many of their videos. Here are a few:

 

 

There are quite a few ideas, that I could possibly 'borrow', that appear throughout a lot of their videos. The use of a plain white background in the videos 'Babies' and 'Mis-Shapes' among others, is a very simple yet very eye-catching and sharp - it creates more focus on the band member, particlarly Jarvis Cocker (the lead singer).

Things such as the use of the clocks in 'Disco 2000' or the images created of a working class life in 'Common People' are also things that I could possibly attempt to integrate into my video in some form.

The Verve Video Analysis - Bitter Sweet Symphony

I have chosen to analyse Bitter Sweet Symphony by the Verve as my Verve video analysis.
Bitter Sweet Symphony is the 1st single on The Verve's third album, Urban Hymns and it reached number 2 on the UK Singles chart. The full version of the song is 5:57 minutes long and is of the alternative/britpop genre similarly to bands like Oasis and Pulp. The song also in a similar way makes use of violins to give it a unique sound. These qualities will make it a good analysis to conduct for research regarding my chosen song. The video is in a pseudo-performance style as the lead singer is shown singing as he walks along a street but the rest of the band is not shown.

 

The video begins with a camera panning to follow the Richard Ashcroft (the lead singer) as he walks onto a busy street. The unique sound of the violins fade in on the 3rd second eventually drowning out the ambient street sounds that could be heard before. This highlights how the character is thinking and how he becomes almost oblivious to the world around him as the song continues.

He stops and turns to face the camera as it pans up to show his face. The camera moves slowly backwards as he pauses and looks towards it as if deep in thought.

Eventually, Ashcroft begins to move forwards, following the camera. The rest of the song continues as he walks along the street throughout which, he is shown to be completely uncaring and almost oblivious to his surroundings. Almost immediately as he crosses a road where he doesn't look, he is almost run over but he shows no reaction.

 

He continues to walk down the street and doesn't move from his path regardless of who or what is in his way. The lyrics were clearly used directly when the video was being created, the third line of the first verse is ''I'll Take You Down The Only Road I've Ever Been Down''.

This is represented by the road he walks down and along with ''It's A Bitter Sweet Symphony, This Life'' clearly set the theme for the whole video in the eyes of the director and the video reflects that in the singer's nature and actions.

 

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony on MUZU.TV.

Music Video - Basic Ideas

After looking through the results of my audience research, as well as extensive research of music videos across the Internet, I have finally been able to start creating my music videos' story.
For the video, I extensively looked at similar artists to the genre that my song is from, and then choosing just one of those artists to base my music video around.

The band that I chose was The Verve.

Looking through almost all of the videos have an identity that is prevalent throughout them. The whole band feature in nearly all of the videos, but only Richard Ashcroft appears in all of them. In a lot of the videos, Ashcroft is made to be pictured as an isolated, lonely figure, such as in 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' and 'The Drugs Don't Work'. Another connotation is that the band's appearance, both them and their surroundings, are made to look very bleak and desolate places, for example 'History' mainly features driving around in desert and wasteland, or 'Rather Be' which features Ashcroft walking around a small wood for the entirety of the video. There are exceptions to these though, such as 'Lucky Man', which is quite the opposite of a Verve video, with a much joyous atmosphere about it. The songs and song lyrics themselves dos have an effect on the video, as a lot of their songs do have a slightly depressing tone towards them, which will affect the video.


The Verve - Lucky Man on MUZU.TV.