#28

I learned quickly the past few weeks that "analyzing music videos" was definitely not code for "slack off and just watch music videos".  It turned out to be a very time consuming and very informational project. It was challenging and fun to relate the film terms to the videos presented in class and try to begin to understand meanings. There was a plethora of videos that demonstrated the film terms discussed in class. The video Kids by MGMT was shown and, I thought, demonstrated diegesis well which is basically the meaning of the video that is not blatantly obvious. In the video there is a child who is seeing monsters everywhere and is terrified and the video is referring to the demons in everyone's life and how they can seem to trap us. The most memorable example of flashback was used in Toby Keith's video, How Do You Like Me Now?! In the video the flashback is clear because the color changes to a sepia tone and is a little blurry. It shows the man in high school when the popular cheerleader wouldn't give him the time of day which was also a very clear display of the genre which in that case was clearly narrative not stylistic, because it told a story. The story is the plot of the video which, again, was about a boy who was undesirable in high school and liked the popular cheerleader and asked her out but was always rejected. Then, twenty years later he is a famous musician and she is the one who doesn't stand a chance. The video had a very comedic spin on directing the plot. Editing is used in every film when multiple clips of film are joined together to form a single scene. At about 1:15 in Hey Brother by Avicii, there is a edit of the buys putting coins on a railroad track and the editing is very creative. Scene sequence means to cross cut lots of different scenes to convey meaning. Specifically, in the video Hero of War by Rise Against, editing was used a lot to convey the pain of the soldier in the video. It cuts from a scene in the dark of the man crying, to him emotionally distancing himself from his wife and scenes of battle. Mise-en-scene is a term in the film industry that is used to everything in the scene when paused that can capture the plot, the meaning, and the essence of the film. In Hero of War, the miss-en-scene can be seen at about 1:40 when the main character is at war and is looking at a photo of him and his wife, which could symbolize his old life while the new him is stuck at war. The term focus is used to describe a shot where the angle and lighting are directed in a way to move your eyes to one thing. In the very beginning of the video Your Glass house by Atmosphere the camera focuses on empty beer and liquor bottles throughout the surrounding. This gives the viewer a clear idea of what the film is about before it starts. In the video Hey Brother by Avicii, the term shot  is displayed well at the very beginning when the character is shown in an uninterrupted shot from a long angle riding his bike. This shot sets the tone. An auteur is basically the artist or director of a film. In the music video Because of You by Kelly Clarkson, the auteur connected with the message of the song and thats why he wanted to direct it which I thought was very interesting.