Wednesday 21 November 2012

Rock Video Analysis 4 - I Am the Least of Your Problems

So I intend to use a lot of dark shots during the performance segments of my video (which in my case will be done using the green screen and a dark background), so I thought it'd be a good idea to see how other artists have approached this idea.

To make up for the worrying lack of FotL in our lessons since Mr. S. left, I'll have a look at the I Am the Least of Your Problems video, as it features a lot of performance sections in a dark area.

(heads up: lots of flashing lights)

This video shows the performers in a very dark room with the only solid lighting being on the band members themselves; this is creating a really sweet intense aura which in all honesty I think is very effective in setting a dark tone. I do intend to try to create a similar tone to this in the I Am... All of Me video, though I want to use the green screen to create an artificial setting as opposed to using an actual room for the sake of exploring the uncertainty of the performer's mental state. It also gives me the chance to play around with the background to move from dark to light to enforce the conflict idea I have mentioned in previous posts.

In terms of the kinds of shots used, I feel it is useful to look at the way Falco is presented in this video as he is playing guitar and lip-syncing, as I will be. A great deal of the shots of him are close ups of his face, with only the occasional mid shot to establish that he is playing a guitar; this is something I wish to use in my video as it will help establish my performer's image (as per Goodwin's theory) by making my face recognisable (thus boosting my ego making me famous and my record label lots of money as a result of it). The occasional mid shot is necessary to show the guitar; thus satisfying one of the conventions of rock videos.

Additionally: the blinding lights. I should use these! But not in such a blinding way. My song is much slower than this song, so I do not need to have them going so fast, and ideally I'd like to have an element of randomness as to when they go off (I will use the lights to represent the 'light' side trying to break through the darkness; I want it to be a struggle so it shouldn't use any kind of consistency). This will have to be done in post production rather than through the use of actual strobe lights to avoid interfering with the chroma keyer effect.

I also want to use some of the slightly random looking cuts we see here. Again, to emphasise the struggle of light vs. the darkness, I was thinking of having very short cuts to zoomed in versions of the shot which will be lighter than the main shot - I could also potentially have the main shot in greyscale with the short 'struggle' shot showing my face in colour. I'll see what looks best when editing.

-HM.

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