2nd Textual Analysis Of Music Videos

Arctic Monkeys- The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala

For my textual analysis of a music video, ive decided to analyse ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’ by the ‘Arctic Monkeys’. The band formed in 2002 in a suburb of Sheffield called High Green. The band consists of four members; Alex Turner (lead vocals, guitar), Matt Helders (drums, backing vocals), Jamie Cook (lead guitar) and Nick O’Malley (bass guitar, backing vocals).  The band has enjoyed a successful career so far and has been regarded as one of the best English bands of their time. Their debut album, released in 2006; ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ became the fastest selling debut album of British music history. Since then, the band has released ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’, ‘Humbug’ and their latest album ‘Suck It And See’. ‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’ is the second single from fourth studio album and was intended to be released as a 7" vinyl on 15 August 2011.The music video was released on 6 July 2011. It was directed by Focus Creeps and featured footages of the band and model Scarlett Kapella as the "hellcat."

In terms of the genre characteristics, the video consists of some stereotypical aspects of the ‘Indie’ genre. Examples of this would consist of ‘casual’ footage of the band as they stroll down the beach, walk around in a field or simply relax together as well as getting ready to perform. Live footage of the band is shown along with their fans at some of the gigs having a good time and therefore this shows a hint of the band’s live performance quality and the fact that they put on an energetic show. However, there are also counter typical aspects of the video which can also be considered quite original and vintage therefore supporting the band’s new musical styling and look that they have carried out since bringing out their latest album which has been criticised as being different to their other material and in my opinion, the retro vibe goes along nicely with their new aura. In the documentary-style music video, a grain effect is heavily used throughout along with the Super 16mm film that therefore enables some colour fading and gives the video an overall vintage inspired feel to the overall product. Also, in the video the band are all shown driving down a highway in what seems to be a white 1960 Cadillac Convertible which once again emphasises the vintage feeling to the video as well as the band’s new image.

Moving onto the relationship between lyrics and visuals, I think this song is about being in a sort of argumental deadlock. Dealing with a problematic/complicated relationship which has been slowly breaking apart and how it is dealt with through trying to avoid the truth and singing to block out thinking about it and having to realise and deal with the true state of the situation and basically pretending and hoping everything is OK when it's not. In terms of connecting the lyrics to the visuals in the video, the ‘hellcat’ who is played by model; Scarlett Kapella, seems to be the core of the argument and throughout the video she is portrayed as a mysterious and a dominant sexual character that hides in the dark and only comes into the light to cause or inflict some sort of controversy.

“Just when things are getting complicated in the eye of the storm
She flicks a red hot revelation, off the tip of her tongue
It does a dozen somersaults and leaves you supercharged
It makes me wanna blow the candles out just to see if you glow in the dark”

In my opinion, the red hot revelation is self-explanatory and the "dozen somersaults" are just there to exaggerate the effect and impact of what she said to him (probably revelation of an affair). The glow in the dark part is referring to the constant feeling of discontent in their relationship. There's no escaping the issue; even in the dark.
The shalalala between the verses is the persona trying to block everything out and pretend he's ok by humming/singing a tune. In the video, a specific example of the relationship between lyrics and visuals would be when a quick shot of an amplifier with ‘simms- watts’ is briefly shown at exactly 0:44 seconds into the video to the lyrics, ‘… leaves you supercharged’.

The video uses allot of overlapping images throughout and this contributes to the relationship between the music and visuals. The song is quite pacey and at the same time, relaxing with a summer vibe. Therefore, there are parts of the video use constants shots and cuts especially when the drums pick up the pace. In the chorus, due to the lyrics, ‘shalalala’, the song slows down briefly and that’s when the hellcat is mainly shown. A quite obvious example of this relationship comes at around 1:19 into the video where we see what seems to be a member of the band crew pretending to play bass whilst we hear a bass solo in the music. Also, further into the video, we see a fan at a gig miming the words; ‘shalalala’ whilst they are sang by Alex turner himself as the song comes to an end.

To conclude, the video is evenly performance based and narrative based in my opinion and there are no real intertextual references. The relationship between the lyrics and visuals is what really guides the video along with the fact that it is completely different to their previous music videos due to the retro and vintage vibe that it takes on successfully. Overall, the video shows how much the band have changed in terms of their image, music and also how they have grown up and matured into a word class band with a worldwide following.

Fernando Rocha

1st Textual Analysis Of Music Videos

The Strokes – Juicebox

‘The Strokes’ are an American indie rock band formed in 1999 in New York City. Consisting of Julian Casablancas (lead vocals), Nick Valensi (lead guitar), Albert Hammond, Jr. (rhythm guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass guitar) and Fabrizio Moretti (drums and percussion), the band have been named one of the most prominent and influential rock bands to emerge in the 21st century. Upon the release of their debut album Is This It in 2001, the melodic garage rock sound received universal acclaim from both mainstream and independent publications, including 5 stars from Rolling Stone, it made many critics' top 10 lists, and was named the best album of the year by Entertainment Weekly and TIME. Since then, the band have gone on to release another 3 studio albums consisting of ‘Room On Fire’ (2003) , ‘First Impressions Of Earth’ (2006) and ‘Angles’ released earlier this year. For my textual analysis of a music video, I’ve decided to analyse ‘Juicebox’, the second track and first single from the bands third album, released in the US in October 2005. The track was leaked long before it was released as a single. The early leaking of the song forced the band and managers to release it as a single in iTunes format earlier than previously planned. The video for "Juicebox", directed by Michael Palmieri with cinematography by Christopher Doyle, features comedian David Cross as a DJ in a radio station in New York City. The video caused some controversy because it contained an abundance of sexual content, which caused Palmieri to do major edits on the video so that it would be less explicit.

The video initialises with a shot capturing a sign saying ‘ON THE AIR’ and quickly cuts to the band getting ready to perform on a live radio session. In terms of genre characteristics, this is a fairly stereotypical aspect of the indie genre due to the fact that in the video there is a performance based concept. In comparison to this, we see a DJ named ‘Woody’ announcing that the band are live in the studio however, he refers to them as ‘Stroke’ and ‘Juicebox’ as ‘Juicy Juice’. This adds a certain humour to the video and gives off the impression that the band arent taken that seriously as well the fact that they aren’t ‘huge’ in the states in comparison to their status in Europe and the DJ goes on to speak of this. At this point, we get reaction shots of each member in the band before they start playing. We are given evidence through their reactions that they arent particularly enfusiastic and this can also be considered quite stereotypical of an indie band’s attitude towards certain ways of promoting (especially in this case). Other characteristics that link the video to its genre is the amount of sexual content that is shown within the video. Throughout the video, we see shots of women kissing  eachother, a man and a woman kissing as well as a very odd scene where an elder woman is shown scrubbing the floor whilst her dog gets excited because of it. In a way, some of the scenes can be considered counter typical because they are quite different and controversial however it still relates to the music genre.

When it comes to the relationship between lyrics and visuals, the song  in my opinion is mainly based on lust. Throughout the video, we see shots that do portray the lyrics as well as the meaning behind the song. Initially, there is a wide shot of New York City along with its bright lights and highlighting this shot is what seems to be the Empire State Building giving off sound waves to the whole city and we come back to this shot a couple more times later on in the video therefore emphasising the meaning behind it.

The lyrics that relate to this are;

‘Why won't you come over here?
We’ve got a city to love
Why won't you come over here?
We’ve got a city to love.

It is as if the music played by the band is amplified through the city and once it reaches the people, they become sexually aroused. This therefore brings me to the references that relate the notion of looking. This plays a key part in this particular video, so much so that some of the original extended version had to be edited to make it less sexually explicit. Its not the band that are on sexual display however, it is everyone else in the video that clearly is. The camera work, costume and acting all contribute towards the implied sexual display.

In terms of the relationship between music and visuals, we come across our first example early on in the video. This consists of the old woman tapping the ash of her cigarette to the beat of the drum fill. This evidently needed some speeding up in the editing in order to achieve the effect. Another example would be towards the end of the video where everything seems climax. The actors in the video come to the end of their sexual arousal as the song comes to and end. There are no real intertextual references in the video, however, when it comes to close ups of the artists and star image motifs, there are a few. Through this video, I think that the record company are trying to sell the band as well as highlighting the fact that at the time, they were a breath of fresh if you like, and they came across as different therefore decided to make a controversial music video.

To conclude, I think that the video is 50% performance based, 30% concept based and 20% narrative based. All 3 come together and successfully achieve an individual video, which also portrays the band’s style. In terms of relating the video to the song, as Julian Casablancas once quoted, “I remember people saying this track's ugly, I think it's got a great personality."

Fernando  Rocha

ThE StRoKeS - JuIcEbOx by MiKaEl94

Costume, Props & Casting Ideas

COSTUME	PROPS	CASTING
Face paint- black and white Masks - plain white masks Smartly dressed ( black trousers, wool coat, white long sleeve shirts, black ties, bow ties, waistcoats, shoes, hats etc.)	Multi coloured play balls( 100 ) Sparklers Pack of cards Flowers ( fake) Bike Net Cardboard boxes Beer cans Yellow rubber duck	Fernando Rocha Matthew Elrick Karl Tedder

Research Into Similar Texts

Target Audience Analysis

Target Audience Analysis;

Miles Kane - Inhaler

The track that we have chosen to make a music video for our A2 media studies coursework would be classed in the genre of British Alternative Rock/Indie. Therefore we have quite a compact target audience that we have to cater for when making our music video.

After conducting some research into the areas of the world of which the tracks official video has been listened to via YouTube, we found that the main audience comes from Western Europe, an area that this genre of music has thrived in during the past decade or so. The bulk of Miles’ audience come from the UK, this probably owing to the popularity of his previous projects; ‘The Rascals’ and ‘Last Shadow Puppets’ which although enjoyed some success in the States, enjoyed the majority of its success in the UK. YouTube also showed most hits coming from females of the ages 13-17, followed by male 35-44 and 18-24. Therefore, we are provided with the issue of allowing our video to be relatable to, females and males, as well as different generations of males.

In terms of psychographics, we feel our target audience will be that of ‘The Reformer’. People of this type value their own independent judgment, something that is very important to people who listen to music of the Alternative Rock genre, a reformer is the sort of person who would say to a mainstream artist, “don’t tell me what to do or what to think”. Another type of person we would like to think that our video would attract is those of the psychographic, Explorer, the sort of people that are driven by a need for new discovery or challenges, we feel that our idea is fairly different to most videos and very unique, therefore, Explorers could be interested in our video, thinking of it as a new discovery to take advantage of on their behalf.

Finally Demographics, on this behalf, our aim for our target audience would be anything from ‘B’; Middle class, ‘C1’; Lower Middle Class and ‘C2’ Skilled Working Class. The main demographic class of people that we are aiming to be our target audience are of ‘C1’; Lower Middle Class, would be our main target, people of this class are usually office staff or supervisors who are ‘working for the weekend’, this is definitely the kind of person we are looking into targeting to watch our music video as those of higher class would probably look down on the surreal nature of our video due to the difference to their probably mainstream preference. We definitely feel that our video will apply more to the lower classes than the higher in the world due to the nature of the video and general antics involved in it.

Overall Target Audience

60% / 40% - Male / Female

Ages - 13-25

Psychographic - The Reformer

Demographic - C1 - Lower middle class.

Storyboards

These are 12 storyboards that we have come up with as shot ideas for our music video. We will be shooting soon.  

Risk Assessments

Risk assessments

Risk	Level of danger	Plan to avoid risk
Use of sparklers	Medium	Holding away from face and body to avoid a nasty burn
Riding a bike into a pile of boxes	Low	Being very careful
Filming near a busy road	Low	Have a spotter looking out for potentially unaware drivers
Use of a ladder to drop colourful play balls	Low	Have someone hold the bottom of the ladder
Flicking of a cigarette	Low	Keep out of the way of the cigarette end

Schedule Calendar