Technical Analysis- 'Mystery Repeats' Pete Philly & Perquisite

I chose to analyse this video as i thought it would give us a good insight into the style of a Pete Philly & Perquisite and hopefully give us some ideas to make our video fit their style and genre of music. It also might help us decide on locations, colours and shot sizes for our video.

Here is what i have found out from my analysis:

-The shots are very fast and quickcutting, often using several shots for several seconds of music, I think this helps to keep with the fast pace of the track.
-Almost all of the shots were 'meat' shots, which means they focus on the artist, so this video was entirely a performance based video, with no narrative fuzz as at all. This helps to keep artist authenticity, but this may also cause problems with lip syncing when we are making our video as the music is very fast paced and as is the rapping.
-The video features a sunny blue sky in almost every background, even when the surrounding buildings and backdrop of the shot are all in black and white. I think this helps to show the upbeatness of the video, and keep with the sunny feel of the music.
-As almost all of the shots are 'meat' shots the artist does a lot of movement with his body and arms, as often seen in rap performances, this means he is leaning in closer to the camera, moving his hands closer and leaning away from it. For this reason i think a lens that creates some sort of distortion would be useful and it would create a good effect when the artist is close to the camera. It would also distort all of the surroundings except for the artist who is in the centre of the shot, leaving the focus of the shot purely on his performance.
-The video uses large amounts of CGI digital wipes, such as people carrying the screen away to reveal the shot behind. I think this would be very hard to recreate with our music video so i think we should generally stick to normal cuts.
-The artist has several costume changes throughout the video, and i think this is definetaly something that we could encorperate into our video. The clothes he wears are general Hip Hop type clothing, such as baggy jeans and a baggy t-shirt.
-There are some shots of the music actually being played, such as shots of Perquistie playing the chello, and shots of him using the keyboard, and i think this should definetaly play a part in our music video as there is a long section where there is rapping at all, and there is jazz music.

Technical Shot Analysis: Radiohead - 'Fake Plastic Trees' -- Alex

I chose this video to analyse technically as it features a mix of performance based shots, (performance being the main artist Thom Yorke singing but not the rest of the band playing bcause its going to be hard to for us to reproduce a jazz ensemble in our own video plus the music is electronic for the best part), and a narrative fuzz element also. I wanted a video that repeated sequences, meaning that due to editting it appears that there is more action even though there are only a handful of different locations/ scenes.

• 'Meat' shots are of Thom yorke who is for the duration of the video sitting in a shopping trolley. MCU and CU shots are used in many different angles and different times
  Sequences are repeated; Narrative fuzz of people around the 'supermarket' type setting are seen - other people are in a trolley - using similar MCU and CU shots as the main meat shots; a high angle shot which could be positioned like a CCTV camera films a man pulling items off shelves; a man shaving his head, twins in childrens trolley seats, a man pushing and tipping a trolley, etc
• The video is mainly about capturing expressions; the majority are MCU or CU shots of the people including Thom Yorke
• in some cases like the man walking up the isle and a different one shaving his head features an editting effect which shows the same shot but delay cut so that the it 'speeds up' the action but keeps it at normal speed i.e. without the need for undercrancking.
• a handycam is used in a low position to get to the level of the wheel of a trolley which is used in a quick sequence.
• Different types of focus are used, particularly in the meat shots of Thom Yorke; soft focus is used at the start of many shots, viewing him through the rungs of the trolley side, slowly sharpening the focus before a cut.
• LS and ELS are used to capture people far off i.e down the long straigh isles
• Editting effects are infrequently used for stylistic effect e.g a MCU of Thom Yorke in the trolley from a left perspective is coupled with an insert shot of thom york shaking his head in BCU before cutting back to the MCU from another angle.
• Overcranking and slow panning/ tilts are used to possibly emulate the feel of the slow tempo of the track, however cuts are quite quick, averaging about 1 cut every 1 to 2 seconds, and the cuts are even more frequent towards the end of the song where it becomes more 'heavy' i.e singing is loudewr and more intense and guitar riffs are aplenty.

This technical analysis has helped me realised the complexity and detail required to construct a music video which to the untrained eye may seem simple or uninterlectually demanding to watch. This will help with developing our pitch as i will know how to link shots to eachoither, what types of shots should be used to create a particular effect, and also how long into each shot a cut should be made to make for an authentic music video.