Video Analysis - By Luke
The Suburbs (Arcade Fire) directed by Spike Jonze.

The video itself is shot
without the band Arcade Fire featuring at all. Normally within music
video, more often than not, the band will be featured in a performance
scenario or in an acting role. Within our video we want to provide a
contrast between the narrative as well as the performance of the band to
give a healthy balance as well as two different outlooks to keep the
audience interested.
The
video itself features the life of everyday teenagers in their local
area and the activities that they get up to - perhaps providing a
microcosm for teenagers in general. They are shown riding their BMXs,
firing BB Guns at each other and meandering about. In the video, there
is a military aspect where the army instill marshall law in the town
which shows the difference between the innocence shown by the teens in
the video and then later highlights this loss of youth innocence as the
army take this away from them.
When looking at this
video, the loss of innocence is not important in terms of our research
as we want to show how the youth can be presented as nothing but
teenagers in their normal everyday life. So by focusing on Spike Jonez's
portrayal of this, we can be inspired as to how to show the youth in
our video which is titled 'Young Blood'. It is our plan to also show
young people in events such as around a campfire, walking through the
woods and on bikes for example, similar to the Suburbs video.
The first shot is of a boy walking in front of a rather suburban setting, which immediately
introduces the viewer to the characters' surroundings. This is then
repeated in a long shot of all the teenagers riding their bikes through a
typical American housing estate. The camera then tracks alongside one
of the characters who again is stereo typically presented wearing a
beanie hat and vest, symbolic of casual teenage wear. At this time the
lyrics say "In the suburbs, I used to drive", which can be seen as a
literal and iconic representation of bike riding as it is so familiar
for a young person in the childhood. Jonez then carries on to show their
friendship and youthfulness as they jump off their bikes and let it
ride away before celebrating with each other at the achievement of the
bike continuing to stand without them on it. It depicts the simple
things that make a teenager happy and are integral parts of their life.
We want to rein-act these simple events and show the joy of being a
young person in our music video ultimately.

The
next scene shows the group on top of a bridge firing their BB Guns at a
stranger and then laughing in a medium shot. Whilst this is happening,
two of the characters are aside of this and are shot in a close-up
intimately- showing young love and romance as a normal part of growing
up and how innocent love is endearing. Here we see two components of
teenage life happening alongside one another, love and fun. The romance
side of thing we want to be represented within our video and this can be
seen hopefully in the camp fire
scene with couples spread out around it in quite a cliche situation.
Spike Jonez shows these as he himself is quite young for a director and
therefore has these memories fresh in his memory. As we (our group) are
still this age we are living through them right now, therefore our
representation should be even more accurate than his, so theoretically
ours could be more credible.
Although it is a
complicated video, when you take away the involvement of the army, the
core of the video is teenage experiences and within our video 'Young
Blood' we want to demonstrate this. The opening lyrics set the platform
for what is to unfold in the video -"We're all young and naive still, we
require certain skill". We want to let this curiosity of a teenager be
shown and them developing their life experiences - which reiterates the
gaining skills message.
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