Video Analysis

Skip To The End- The Futureheads music video

The narrative of the video shows a young couple before they get married, going to a therapist who show them their possible future together to decide whether they will work together. The ending of it is quite ambiguous as we don’t know whether they are still wanting to get married or not.

There is a strong lyrical connection to the video, relating to the narrative of the story line, as the couple are decided whether the marriage is “worth going through with” so they “skip to the end” to see if their relationship ends with “a happy ending or a broken heart”. I love the lyrics and video are linked so closely, and I would like to mimic this for our music video.

It seems as though The Futureheads have focused on the idea of humanity in their video with the themes of love and mortality. They constantly refer to love, marriage, children and growing old in their video at random moments. This also happens with the theme of mortality when ghosts and a skeleton appear. The setting they use, the forest, allows them to do this because the forest allows them to hide when and watch people in their element.

There is no band performance in the video, but only the band standing and singing. This subverts genre stereotypes. They are also wearing black and white tuxs to look like they are a part of a wedding band.

The video is very visually dynamic as it makes you want to watch it again, and the interesting narrative also has this quality. This is a trait I would like to have in my own music video.

The colours in the video are very dark with a contrasting lightness at parts. White symbolises purity, which could link to the theme of love. Black symbolises death which relates to the mortality shown amongst.


The editing used basically consists of the 'cut', but with the ghosts, we are shown an overlaying image on the footage which I think looks adventurous, as it could of quite easily looked cheap.


The costumes for the protagonists are their wedding clothes. They both look quite dated and vintage, which is an excellent look to go alongside the music. The white wedding dress is very simplistic, long and covers most of her body. Her hair is also tied up very neatly and  she appears to be wearing little or no makeup. This could tell us that the female protagonist is very plain and simple. This is also the idea you get from the presentation of the man, his hair and facial expressions are very dull and unenthusiastic.


The video has a lot of medium shots of the characters, often walking and seeing things, yet again with near expressionless faces. I think that the director of the video wants you to feel detached from the protagonists and feel more for the actual band members. This would fit in with their other videos where they seem to be center of attention as their record label probably wants their faces to be seen around.  

 Digipack

 I chose to analysis the Fleet Foxes album, ‘Helplessness Blues’ because I loved the album artwork which is very common for the indie genre.

The front pane is simply album artwork mainly focusing on shapes and faces. It also is as if it is framed making it look again, more like artwork. The colours used contrast the black that follows through the other panes. It is a very detailed intriguing piece of artwork which I think fits the genre perfectly.

 The back pane of the cd has a 1960’s feel towards it with the pictures of the band which was common with groups such as Mama’s and Papa’s. The image is in black and white, and the top of the digipack case has the track list on. There is also a barcode, and credits to producers and such on the back, which is another thing you would expect to see on the back on a digipack case.

The spine simply states “FLEET FOXES       HELPLESSNESS BLUES” in white with a black background. This is another obvious thing that is expected on digipack covers, and without would look unprofessional. 

 On the inside panes it is very simple and minimalistic with having the lyrics of their songs on the back, again in black and white. I love this idea of the lyrics being shown and I would like to consider this for our own digipack.

Overall I think this an excellent representation of digipacks, and I would love to take this into consideration for my own.


Poster

This is a poster from the album release of Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues”.

I thought this was a very interesting poster because it subverts the ideas of images and artwork being on posters, as we just see the name of the band.

There is an interesting image inside the band name. We only get a hint at a few of the images behind, but the colours used are interesting and make you curious to know whats behind.

The font is also the same as the one on the cd case, which is a convention of an album release. The portrait size normally subverts the idea of a poster, but I think it works very well in this case.

With the date, name of the album and other information we are shown the really obvious things on the advert.