[JB] Technical Analysis Review

Passion Pit - Little Secrets

This technical analysis was very helpful in aiding me to understand the actual content of music videos. In this specific example, there were a total of 45 shots in the first 1 minute and 30 seconds, meaning a new shot roughly every 2 seconds. This is very helpful because it has made me realise just how many shots a music video contains. The average viewer of one of these music videos doesn't realise how many shots there are because they are usually in time with the music - and they are paying more attention to the actual content and/or narrative of the video rather than what the individual shots are of.

It also showed me how the shots vary in the video. By no means were the shots all similar - there were Extreme Long Shots, Extreme Close Ups, and everything between. There was handicam, zooms, panning and tracking as well as varying heights of the camera (eg. waist height, low angle) to name a few.

An example of when the video is more
focused on performance than narrative

It also showed us that the videos vary a lot in terms of cutting between narrative and performance. Once the music built up in the song, I noticed that the band members had a lot more screen time, and they were seen to be the focus of it. (Note: this conforms with Dyer's Paradoxes to some extent - that they are 'extraordinary' because they are considered the 'life' of the party and very important to the music video).

Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets

In contrast with Passion Pit's video, this video only contained 28 shots in 1 minute and 30 seconds of footage. This means the clips were a little over 3 seconds long each (on average). This goes to show that a music video doesn't necessarily have to have a fast cutting rate.

This clip was only 2 seconds long, whereas
some lasted much longer than this.

There was also great variation in the length of shots. Some of them were 9 seconds long whereas there were some that were shown for less than a second. It mostly depends on the tempo of the track - but not all the time, because in some cases in the video, the tempo sped up but the shots were still long.