When making my music video, my number one priority was to capture the meaning behind the original songs lyrics, the distrust and paranoia, the rising anxiety of social unrest of the individual. This piece was made with the disorientation of the audience in mind, the rapid succession of the images and clips are here to confuse those who watch it.
I wanted to contrast the society we are told to believe in, the utopian, clean, problem free society we see in mainstream media against what we actually live in, the almost dystopian, filthy, paranoia filled we inhabit. The lyrics of the original song speak of a man who has been awoken to the rising social tension around him, whilst not visible, he can sense it. This music video is a physical representation of what he sees.
As mentioned earlier, the video follows a compare and contrast formula, i show the world as shown to us, the impeccable politicians, cold and calculated in there image, against how the general populace sees them, precise and deliberate, surgical with there words and essentially, heartless. The piece is very literate with its metaphors, but for such a meaningful subject matter, i felt that this was the only way to represent it.
The video starts with a static shot of a Tv playing feedback of an old Vhs. This was filmed myself, the purpose of which was to show the foreshadowing of the video itself, how all of the clips shown after are products of the media, lies and exaggerations force-fed to us by the media to lull us into a state of complacency, this also gives the benefit more intellectual weight when i contrast the two versions of the clips against each other.
Every clip i use in this piece (excluding my own) was ripped and downloaded from youtube, this prove to be awkward to do however as every clip varied in quality, the more professional shots such as the speeches given by politicians are well shot and of high quality, whereas footage recorded on an individuals phone such as the grenfell fire video was recorded hastily and therefore, lacking in quality.
For every shot i showcase in my video i created a reverse for them, i manipulate the RGB tones and disrupt the placement of the multiple levels of colour of the video, the result of which produces this ethereal, corrupted visual effect, this was intended to be a representation of how the individual in my analysis of the lyrics see's the world, the distortion intended to be a visual representation of how the society around him refuses to see or even acknowledge the world around them. After this i went frame by frame of footage which clearly shows peoples face, and added Black lines across the eyes and mouth of the subjects, this was incredibly time inducing as every single frame had to be manipulated, i couldn't reuse the lines i used previously, as the individuals of the footage were constantly moving, meaning that the placement of the lines would have been altered. 5 seconds of footage would take 20 minutes to manipulate.
The lines over the eyes of people in the video was intended to be a representation of the individuals recognition of the world around him, anyone showcased in the media is presented as a two dimension individual, there motives and methods dont matter, only them and there actions. This works for both ways, a political figure is presented as a crusader for progress, no matter what there opinion, and a protester in the street is presented as a blight on society, a tool for destruction. I wanted to show the audience that we are all fighting for a cause, we may not agree with each other, we may fight each other, but at its essence, we fight, and we fight for ourselves.
At the halfway point in the music video my own recorded footage is shown, i filmed an abandoned industrial complex just outside of Nuneaton, in the 80's the complex was a hub of industrial might, now it means nothing, a once proud and defined building is now derelict. This was intended to be a visual metaphor for social unrest with our society, how issues and criticisms are spotlighted, then fade forever with no change being granted.
After the halfway point i begin to reverse the footage, i made sure that the cuts were ever so slightly off the beat of the music, this was in order to install paranoia with the audience, to make them feel the disruption to the established formula of the video, just as the individual in my analysis of the lyrics feels. I also begin to fade in tv static as the song progresses, subtlety at first, but then dramatically, and with great intensity. the reversal of the footage and the static of the tv as intended to be a metaphorical and technical representation of a supernova, how under great intensity, everything collapses upon itself. This is obviously a metaphor for how under social tension, at some point a boiling point is hit, upon which total and grand civil unrest, anarchy is met.
Due to the fact that my piece was so time intensive, i had very little time to make fine adjustments to my piece, the cuts on some sections are slightly off compared to the beats of the song, with more time i would have gone over these and altered them so they are set perfectly against the audio. The fact that i used found footage for the majority of my piece disrupted my own filming, no matter i tried i found that all my footage was violently different to the majority of the film, the contrast between found footage and own footage was blatant, and went against my ideas of blending the two seamlessly, with more time id record more footage and select footage which fit perfectly, rather than settling on footage that was only passable.
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