Sam Dubery 13B Media Studies - Music Video

The Used – Pretty Handsome Awkward

My group’s (Group 4) chosen track for our music video is Hoobastank – ‘Never There’, which fits into the modern rock and grunge music genre. As my first analysis of a music video in preparation of our music video, I will analyse The Used – ‘Pretty Handsome Awkward’, which is part of the same genre and provides the same forms and conventions as Hoobastank. The video is performance and concept based where the narrative switches form a strobe band performance to a drunken, rebellious concept of the band’s music.
Throughout the video, there’re various forms and conventions addressed, according to Goodwin’s analysis. Lisa Mann uses many genre characteristics, such as; band and individual musician performances, and close-up camera shots of the musicians facial expressions and instruments, connoting the ‘I don’t care’ and rebellious attitude of the video and music. This is evident in the video as Mann uses strobe lighting on and around the band members to highlight their performance as the camera technique provides multiple angles and judgements made on the musician’s attitudes and movement, connoting the mood of the music to the audience.
Mann creates a relationship between the lyrics and visuals by lip syncing the vocalist’s lip movement with the lyrics and focusing on the movement of the drummer and his ‘kit’ during the breakdown and drum solo section of the video. The pace of the music matches the concept and narrative of the video, however, Mann does creates a diverse relationship between the music and visuals as Mann uses over-cranking to effect the motion of the video in relation to the music. An example of this is as the distorted solo begins and changes the pace of the music, the camera focuses on the guitarist’s movement with his instrument to highlight his movement, showing Mann’s relationship between the music and visuals, however the pace of the video is in contrast to that of the music and the strobe lighting provides an accelerated effect as the guitar solo is quite solo, yet distorted.
Throughout the video, Mann uses a range of camera techniques to portray the musician’s facial and body expressions to the audience, reflecting their personality and providing a form of counter culture attraction to the younger audience on how to act and perform with their instruments whilst playing in their own bands. An exhaustive example of this is during the chorus parts of the song when the narrative focuses on a close-up of the vocalist as his jumps from being in a strip club in Soho to performing with his band, but the camera focuses on his face to convey the attitude of the music. These close-up camera shots of the vocalist provide the ‘meat’ of the video to the audience because it shows the singer as the most important person. During the video, the evident video motif of the singer would be during the second chorus of the video when the vocalist is starring into a mirror and Mann’s use of strobe lighting shows the singer is a drunk and paralytic state, providing a motif for the audience.
There are subtle intertextual references within the video where Mann relates the band’s performance and attitudes to that of early rock icons, such as the singer’s drunken and violent approach n his performance can be related to that of Kurt Cobain and that of Nirvana when the attitude was part of the genre mythology of ‘play dirty’, as well as the camera techniques from late Nirvana video’s, such as ‘Come as you are’ and ‘Lithium’ where the camera shot is out of focus, yet focuses on the band’s ‘wild’ performance.
Lisa Mann uses multiple visual techniques to connote the attitude and tone of the music and video to the audience. Mann’s uses close-up during both the performance and concept part of the video, emphasizing the actions of the musicians to the audience, providing a counter culture attraction, such as the benefits of being drunk, as well as the ‘interesting life’ that a rock star leads. There is little use of editing techniques besides quick-cut editing, evident throughout the whole video as Mann jumps from band to bar performance, reinforcing the ideology and mythology of (modern) Rock ‘N’ Roll , by getting ‘wasted’ in a bar, whilst enjoying fame, not wealth, to the audience. Mann’s use of quick cut editing can be linked to her use of special effects, particularly Over-Cranking and Under-Cranking. As the narrative switches from performance based to concept based, the motion of the video also changes, not always synchronous to that of the music track. An example of the link between Mann’s SFX and editing is when the video switches from a sequence of band performance, which is under cranking, to emphasise the pace of the music to a sequence of the vocalist throwing up, and switching between the two sequences multiple times between the second chorus.
The genre characteristics of the music, affects Mann’s use of Mise-en-scene. The glorious life of fame of being Rock ‘Icons’ is visualised by the band being invited to a premier party at a Soho bar, surrounded by girls and glamour, as part of the ideology whilst getting drunk, and eventually paralytic. The band are seen playing their trademark instruments and set-ups, such as the red Fender bass and the distorted guitar solo, whilst the band members are wearing ‘old-school’ band t-shirts and jeans, yet to emphasise his role and dominance within the band, the vocalist wears a white jacket over his t-shirt to show his unique personality and primary role within the video. These techniques are used because it provides the iconography of the music genre and reinforces the ideology and counter-culture attractions of a rock star’s life through actions and events, rather than just words to the audience. The concept of synaesthesia is evident as the visualised image from the band’s psychological process creates an image of rebellion and anti-social behaviour within the audience’s mind. Mann’s camera techniques imparticular, underline the emotion and personality of the rock ‘icon’ to the audience and connote the rebellious ideology of the genre, such as the vocalist’s ‘grain of voice’, when his singing voice and lyrics are more expressive than his anti-social actions.
The band members are represented in a mixture of representations, from talented musicians to drunken ‘hooligans’ and ‘anti-socials’. As the video is part performance-based and part concept-based, there are different representations of the individual members. The guitarist, bassist and drummer all play a secondary role within the text, compared to that of the vocalist. The other three musicians are portrayed as talented then drunk by Mann’s use of a handheld camera (steadicam) to move with the motion of the musician’s, to portray the state of the body, yet the vocalist is represented as a passionate vocalist, forceful in his actions yet the member who always goes over the top, such as when the close-up, over-cranked camera shot focuses on the vocalist being sick over a sexual woman who seems to be his admirer. The bassist is briefly represented as having a diverse, yet feminine side as the camera focuses on a sexy female body, which moves up onto his face on top of the body, connoting a confused state of mind and emotion within the video.
This representation adds to their meta-narrative because it portrays how the star changes throughout his state of drunkenness, as well as how his personality has changed in comparison to other videos where his personality was more immature and he did not appear as confident and violent within his music. The audience can accept the star’s new image as it addressed the conventional aspects of the Rock music genre, where a good and successful performance is followed and/or compared to a drunken evening and after show.
Within the video, there’re examples of illustration and amplification. The video addressed illustration because the lyrics and genre are providing a visual and literal set of images of the stereotypical drunken genre. In the video, when the band are performing, as well as getting ‘wasted’, the lyrics of having a good time whilst being drunk and hangover create a set of images of what the experience would be like, providing a unique counter-culture attraction. The video addresses amplification because Mann amplifies the song’s original meaning and effect by using multiple camera techniques and SFX which leaves the mark of a true music auteur. Her diverse relationship between the music and lyrics amplifies the original meaning to the audience of how plenty of drink can result in a good time, with distasteful after-effects. The change in pace of the video is equalled by the change of motion in the music, providing an interlude for the audience and allows them to experience the bands action’s and their slow occurrence.
There are various references to popular culture within the video. Part of the social context is getting drunk with your friends and not being in a state of mind when you can actually remember what you are doing or what happened, which is repeatably reinforced within the narrative. Mann’s use of handicam frequently emphasises how a person’s state of mind deteriorates as the level of drink increases, addressing today’s popular binge drinking culture. This creates meaning for the audience as it provides a set of images to the audience of how fame and drink go together to result in a good time with your friends, even if you cannot remember it, as well as meeting their expectations of the band’s music videos, prior to the appearance of their past work.
This video could be seen as art because Mann’s presentation of various ideologies and performances are represented with an artistic style, where she leaves her auteur style evident to the audience, which add ideas and pleasure to the audience’s visual pleasure. The video presents multiple challenging ideas as various themes are addressed throughout the text, such as the idea and representations of being a transvestite, creating a comical effect within the younger sections of the target audience, that finds the idea of being a transvestite humorous. The video can be seen as Postmodern because the representation of the musicians show a rebellious stance to mainstream and commercial ideas, such as rejecting the lust of women and other pleasures, as well as borrowing themes, techniques and special effects from the grunge music genre, where the handicam is evident to connote disorder and drunkenness, as well as the borrowed motion of a mixed concept and performance based video, addressing social issues.
Within the video, there is a mixture of different social groups represented. The primary social groups would be the stereotypical ‘emo’s’, which stereotypically define the appearance of the band members. This group is represented as the anti-hero(s) and the trouble makers of society, who get drunk, smash objects within their environment, get drunk to evade their problems of fame, or in society, their depression, and have no appreciation for those around them, however an oppositional reading of this group is that they go out an enjoy themselves and their music, however, the final results are not always planned or expected ones. The other dominant social groups represented within the video are women and in a rare case, transvestites. Throughout the concept-based sections of the text, the rock stars are surrounded by women, some portrayed as prostitutes, others as bystanders and friends, yet their appearance and dress connotes their sexual tone, that they are looking for sex, no matter who it may be with or how it occurs. It can be argued that the band are expressing how they are against ‘sleeping around’ o this night of ‘fun’, as the vocalist is sick over one of the women who appears to be flirtatious around him, which is a dominant part of the (meta-) narrative. As I mentioned earlier, the location of the concept-based sequences is a London Soho Nightclub, and some characters from Soho are seen as somewhat, ‘different’, this image is reinforced within the band’s representation as the bassist is vividly portrayed as a transvestite through a rising number of low and high angled shots, used by Mann.
The ideological discourse within the video is that you can go out and enjoy yourselves with your friends, without having to wreck your evening through stupidity. The band portray their time out at night as a lively and surreal outing, where drink normally does get the better of them, which challenges the ideological discourse as numerous times within the video, the musicians are recklessly smashing glasses and being sick over people around them, reinforcing the imagery of a ‘pretty handsome’, yet awkward night, however, the video could be seen as reinforcing the ideological discourse as they do enjoy their ‘night out’ and have fun by partying, which is part of the ideological discourse and counter culture attraction of being a rock star.
Having studied the video numerous times, I think that the video would require an ambient viewing. A large proportion of 16-24 year olds watch Music T.V because there is nothing else to do or they want something to watch whilst they’re doing something else, so an ambient viewing would take place because the audience is watching the music video, as there is nothing else to do, and the genre of music will suit the mood that they’re in as they are selective about which channel they watch. This Ambient T.V mode also allows a long term relationship to be built up between the artist and audience as it may encourage the audience to more of the band’s videos or listen to more of the band’s music as the audience finds that it matches their mood, which is created through repetition on TV and in the mind.