Video 1 – Shut Up & let me go: The Ting Tings
The first video that I will be analysing is ‘Shut up & let me go by the Ting Tings, directed by Alex and Liane for Factory Films. The genre of music in the video is Indie Dance/ Dance Punk, which is emphasised through the mis-en-scene in terms of colour, animation and also by the use of sharp, quick cuts from scene to scene. There is evidently a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. A variety of hand gestures are used to transition from scene to scene and animations such as ‘HEY’ appear illustrating the lyrics as they are being said. The music cuts to the beat and changes pace with the music and tends to get quite fast. The whole song is fast paced but when it reaches the chorus it gets even livelier and so does the performance by the artists. They begin to do ‘Kung Fu’ Style martial arts, illustrating the change of pace of the music.
The record company is obviously trying to sell the song as an upbeat, party track as the entire video is performance based and contains a lot of animation, fast-cuts and colour which seems to be a motif for many of their videos. There are a lot of close-ups of the artists the female band member in particular and it is obvious that she is being sold to audiences as the face of the band. The male member of the band is also wearing dark glasses and his face isn’t clear to the audience, amplifying the fact that the record label are trying to convey the female member as the face of ‘The Ting Tings’ and main representative of the group. For example, at the beginning of the video it is only the female singer we see standing at a doorway which leads onto a close-up of her lip-synching to the music, compared to the male member of the band who has few close-ups and when he does they are very quick. This is another motif present in their videos, close-ups of the female singer, as well as blocks of bold colour seen in their other video ‘That’s not my name’. In this video it isn’t really focusing on the male member either and the whole video is performance based. I have also noticed that he always seems to be playing an instrument in this video he has drumsticks whilst in other videos he plays instruments such as the drum kit and piano and everything tends to be still at the beginning of their videos, sort of in a freeze frame. This shows that there isn’t a change of image at all in this video.
There is definitely a notion of looking in the video as it is made up of hand gestures to change scene. The hands are formed in the shape of a triangle and the camera zooms in to go to the next scene/cut, and it’s as if the audience are looking through a lens. For example, at the beginning of the video the audience can see a door and the camera zooms in to the door and through walls. There are many birds eye view shots and for most of the video it looks as if they are almost trapped in a cage. There is grass on the floor and the audience is looking at them fighting each other in the enclosed space. I believe the notion of looking is highlighted in this video because they want the focus on them; it’s as if they are saying look at me. This was in fact their break out song in America after it being featured on an iPod advert so they wanted to make an impact.
Overall, the video meets the expectations of the genre as it has fast, cuts, splashes of colour and is performance based. There are not many intertexual references in the video however; it does refer to people at home as a lot of the video is set in a living room, the hands representing a TV screen or lens which also refers to the notion of looking.
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