Music Video Analysis

Analysing the music video 'Lions in cages' by Wolfgang using theory, led me to see just how many different components work together in music videos to create the overall effect.

Carol Vernallis (2004) stated that lots of close-ups are incorporated into music videos to allow the audience to remember the main faces and characters within the frames. I found this to be very true throughout this video as many close-ups and zooms on to artists/character's faces are present. In fact, close ups are evident even from the very beginning of the video, as seen below.

This is an example of a close-up of the main character and as frames featuring just her facial expressions appear frequently, we can follow her story and get an understanding of who this character is supposed to be and the events in which she is taking part in. Just as Vernallis stated, these angles allow the main character to be remembered and recognised by the audience. Something which would not just continue a theme throughout the video but would also allow the audience to associate this particular character with the song and/or lyrics themselves.

This close-up is slightly different as it features the main singer and artist in the band instead of a character in the storyline. By utilising these close-ups the audience can put a face to the name of the band and hopefully gather some more information surrounding them and their genre by the look and feel of the main artist. Lots of elements work together to create this impression such as what the artist is wearing, even down to the hairstyle and of course facial expression plays a huge role in evolving people's opinions of this particular band.

Andrew Goodwin stated that there must be a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, whether that be that they compliment each other or even contrast strongly against each other. In this video's case, there is a relationship (as seen in the image below).

This is a common scene in this video and depicts people dressed up as different animals. As the lyrics revolve around the subject of animals in cages.   (e.g - Lions in cages, just for fun. But you will pace around your cage and wait for night to come.) 

We see all of the characters in the video portrayed as if they were animals in the city that they inhabit. This is a powerful and effective message and is conveyed across using a strong illustrative link between the lyrics and the physical video, just as Goodwin stated.

Robert Stam stated that usually a specific genre is very hard to define. We definitely see strong evidence for this idea in this video. For example, someone could class the physical music as being 'indie pop' but the visuals seem to contrast with this idea (as seen below).

As demonstrated here, we see many props such as the drums that suggest and hint towards the fact that it belongs to the indie pop genre. However, the visuals strongly go against this, as we can physically see in this image. There may be the use of the prop (drum kit) but this is challenged by the character dressed in an animal costume which leads the whole video slightly astray into the genre of 'alternative'. As we can see overall, and as Robert Stam said, a genre is very hard to define and even sometimes when we think it's easy to put a genre in a category it can be very hard to do so. 

The final theorist I will look at is Knight who once argued that making sense of texts in genres is an active process of creating meaning. In other words (and the way I interpret this) each video that claims to belong to a certain genre can bring some different elements to the table and once again, alter the definition of that genre. As I have mentioned, this video combines stereotypical 'indie' and also 'alternative' components which suggests that it is indeed a video that challenges the typical boundaries of a genre and therefore a music video made for that genre.