Friday, 16 April 2010
Music Video Analysis - The Flood - Escape the Fate
The first scene of the music video shows a red car pulling up. Looking quite vintage and relatively rich, we expect the people within the car to immediately be relatively powerful in terms of either status or in the current situation. They pull up in the rain, get out and we see the band members disembark. This scene is filmed as an extreme longshot so we can see everything going on. They begin opening a large freight cargo container, at this point no music is playing. This draws the audience in, makes them curious as to what the plan are doing or planning. Inside the freight container we get a longshot of the interior of it as the lights turn on. We see the drum kit at the far end and the microphone at the front, giving away the purpose of the container, for the band to perform. The band members shuffle in, take up their instruments and positions and the song commences seconds after that. As the main riff of the song gets well underway the camera shimmers in and out of focus, empowering the sound of the band and the vocalists screamed lyrics, making them seem like some kind of physically powerful force. Camera angles vary dynamically, showing low angles looking up at the guitarist dive bombing his guitar (a term used amongst guitarists for holding fingers down on the fretboard and rushing down the length of it creating a sustained noise going down in pitch) and the drummer hammering away at the drums. The band take on very animalistic and almost feral appearances, showing their possession by the heavy music they love so much. All these small things work towards drawing the audience into the music as soon as possible, whilst watching this music video, and seeing the energy within each member of the band and their aggressive nature shadowing the music.
During particularly more heavy parts of the song for instance when the lead singer screams or the bassist leans over and screams, the camera again goes out of focus, to empower the vocalists. All the band members are wearing black and from the low angles used, it makes them all look very dark and imposing figures against the lights in the cargo container. The cameras flick from shot to shot, going in and out of focus frequently to almost disorientate the audience, to overwhelm them with things going on. It soon cuts to a shot of the lead singer in the rain and we get a medium close up shot of him singing, head hunched, making him look quite sinister in the rain. This style of quick changing shots, sudden close ups and switching in and out of focus continues to assault the audience in the same way until the breakdown.
The going out of focus for the breakdown starts to take a pattern, rather than doing it at the climax of the vocalists screaming etc, it now takes shape and follows the heavy "headbanging" riff. When the drums, bass and guitar all hit as one during the breakdown, the camera goes out of focus, again serving to make this part of the song seem that much more powerful. At the climax of the breakdown as the lead singer holds a prolonged screamed note, the camera shakes and remains out of focus. This is the most powerful part of the song, in terms of music AND visuals. When the breakdown finishes, we cut to a shot of the drummer hitting a cymbal and standing to grab it (drummers would do this to have a shortened version of a hit cymbal sound, used during a song when a sudden stop is needed), then a swap to a medium close up of the singer from the side holding his mic stand off the ground. At this point only he can be heard for the first line of the chorus, shortly followed by the rest of the band dropping back in after this emphasis of lyrics. With this it returns to the normal methods of the camera focusing and unfocusing with close ups and quick movements. Towards the end of the music video there is a low angled long shot of the whole container which effectively uses the camera to track back while zooming forward to had a distorted effect to the container's walls and the band members.
The video comes to a close with the guitarist having a close up of the final notes strummed and the singer in the rain on a fade out to black.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Star Profile - Linkin Park
Linkin Park are an American rock band (from California) that was started up by 3 high school friends in 1996. Linkin Park released its debut album - Hybrid Theory - a utilisation of the two musical genres nu metal and rap metal. At the time (2000) this was still a relatively new genre and got big publicity for its radio-friendly, yet densely-layered style. At this point, being relatively new, Linkin Park had that fresh look to them. They all dressed in casual-smart clothing, with several members featuring excentric hair styles. The drummer Rob Bourdon and the turntablist "Mr." Hahn especially would dress in closer to casual clothes but still sticking with colour schemes and had that alternative rock-ish look to them. At this point they had co-ordination within their appearance, but not too much of a common dress theme.
Their album concept cover from "Hybrid Theory" was mean't to represent the band's merge of two big genres, seemingly combining hip hop and metal, two genres that did not neccessarily go hand in hand with one another. The concept art on the front is a soldier running forward with a flag, with the artwork of additional insect styled wings on his back. Around this artwork are random graphiti stylings of writing, sticking with the grimey/alternative almost industrial look to the bands original appearance.
In 2003, Linkin park released their second album - Meteora - another combination of the two hard hitting genres which continued the band's great success, topped the Billboard 200 chart and went on to become the most successful album in the history of the Modern Rock Tracks chart.
The album cover style changes with this album. Using similar darker grimey colours, the cover creates an interesting concept of the act of graffiti. This sticks to the first album cover of the band's, with the graffiti writing decorating around the main concept artwork but takes it a step further. A very simple and smooth but somewhat compelling and indepth cover, represents the music within perhaps. The clothing and physical appearance themes the band uses for this album have completely changed. Whereas in the first album they seemed to be trying to find their theme in terms of black smart/casual clothing, something to show unison within the band, they now seem to have gone effectively in the opposite direction, at first glance at least.
The bands appearance and image changes for their second album. Linkin Park have deferred from their original appearance from their debut album with the smart/casual black shirts and hoodies to casual clothes matching the colours they use within their franchise, album covers and band artwork. Blues, greys and browns are commonly used, as seen in what they wear above. The lead singer Chester Bennington is not even wearing a single item of black clothing. This casual appearance shows how comfortable they are with their current status and allows them to be easier to be related to by their fans.
In 2006 Linkin Park began work on their third and latest current album, Minutes to Midnight. It ended up being delayed until later in 2007. The band announced before release that this album would stray from their original musical genre of nu-metal and that they would be trying something "new and different" for them. With this came changes in their physical image, the bands logo's and CD album cover artwork styles.
In Linkin Park's previous CD album cover artwork, darker and dull colours have been used, Hybrid theory using an animated concept for their cover, meteora using a smaller image of a graffiti-artist. This is the first album cover featuring the band themselves on, in the form of their silhouettes. This album cover is alot brighter, despite only using black and white shading on it. The figures of the band members are stood in a melancholy state against a white background. Above them is the new band logo of Linkin Park in bold black font. This simple usage of colours, figures and fonts grabs the attention of the audience effectively and quickly. It can be recognised at a distance easily.
As seen in this picture, the band's image has changed significantly. In contrast to the previous album image's of the band the difference can be seen very clearly. On the back cover of the Hybrid Theory album, various members of the band have rather excentric hair styles, colourings etc and are not wearing particularly similar clothes (some wearing grey hoodies, others wearing black button shirts). The band goes even further out of sync of similar clothing for meteora, wearing casual clothes, relatively dull in colour, hoodies, denim jackets etc. However, Minutes to Midnight see's the band take on their first unison of clothing and image style of the members. They are all dressed in black, including their hair colour. They've drifted back towards Hybrid Theory's more smart/casual appearance, black jackets, button tops, shirts and jumpers.
Linkin Park has remained a band with a serious look to them. Never in their album cover pictures have they been smiling or doing any of novelty or humour. They maintain eye contact with the audience in their pictures to add to the serious effect. Their clothing styles have changed throughout each of their albums as discussed and seen, moving from smart/casual (but still with that theme of rebellion) to the more casual dress (to seem alot more down to earth and serious) to then finally change again back to their original smart casual appearance however without the excentricity of their hair styles, giving them even more serious-ness in their image.
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