Music Video Research

Band:  Foo Fighters

Song:  Learn to Fly

Genre:   Rock

Locations & Storyline:  The video is set on an airplane and is a parody of the 1980 American film Airplane! . Doing a parody of a film or a video based on a film always gets recognition from the viewers which means the video may become popular, seen with this video which won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. The video consists of the Band Members playing several different roles like they did in ‘Monkey Wrench’ as well, this creates the comedy effect they wanted in the parody of the film as we see Dave Grohl , Taylor Hawkins and Nate Mendel play a wide mix of rolls such as; A baby, A teenage girl, An old obese couple, flight attendants and engineers as well as playing themselves. The video also stars Tenacious D duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass this will gain more video recognition with the audience. In the Video the Tenacious D duo are seen planting "World Domination brand 'Erotic' Sleeping Powder” into the coffee machine so, all the passengers and pilots drink this coffee which leaves Dave Grohl and the band have to save the day by flying the plane, hence the name of the song “Learn to fly”. It's about the search for some sort of inspiration, the search for signs of life that will make you feel alive.

Costumes: Due to the band playing more then themselves in this video there are many costumes used, however the costumes they wore during the clips of the performance and when they played themselves, they were wearing average everyday clothes, this shows that the band aren’t all about brands and are comfortable in their everyday clothes.

Performance:  The Performance of the band is seen on the the screens in the airplane as if they were watching a live show on television and every now and again we see them performing live in front of a crowd. This shows a combination of both a live performance music video and a story-based video. As we found from our audience research these types of music videos draw the audience in more.

Style:  The style of the music video has a sense of comedy in it as it’s a parody of a film. Most of the Foo Fighters music videos try and have some sort of comedy effect to it.

Notes:  As we are doing a Foo Fighters video  we’ll be concentrating on the effects used in each video.  In this video we’ll be mainly looking at the live performance shown as we’ve decided that our video won’t have much comedy effect as the lyrics are quite serious and the original video for ‘My Hero’ hasn’t got much comedy included.

Band: 30 Seconds to Mars

Song: The Kill ( Bury Me)

Genre: Rock

Locations & Storyline:  The location and storyline can be compared to the 1980’s film The Shining based on the Stephen King Novel. Many scenes in the music video are taken from the film, which shows that the band did a lot of research in what their video will be inspired by. Jared Leto may have also been inspired with the split screen visual work by the editing used in the film Requiem for a Dream which he starred in.

The story basically is about confronting your fears and confronting who you really are, by coming face to face with yourself. This can be identified through the split screen edit used with each of the members of the band through out the video. They each become face-to-face with themselves and their fear. The story fits in with the lyrics of the song “ This is who I really am” meaning they’ve seen themselves for who they really are.

Costumes:  The band members at the beginning are wearing all black, this kind of shows that the song maybe a bit dark and deep with great meaning before the songs. The mirrored reflection of the band are wearing 1920’s tuxedos.

Performance: In the video there are moments where the band are playing live in a ballroom as if they were playing a live concert. In other moments there are scenes of Jared Leto singing in the situations given in the scene.

Style: The style of the video has a storyline like many other 30 Seconds to Mars videos. This specific video is quite deep an intimate and deep, it’s also relevant to the lyrics in the way they are being confronted in who they really are.

Colour:  The colours match the genre as it being quite dark and misty at the beginning, The characters are also seem a bit washed out which gives them an effect that they’re possibly have a dark side to them. 30 Seconds t Mars are known for their Emo Rock genre so the colours used in the video fits their genre.

Notes:  I used this video to analyze, as it was voted the best rock video in 2009 by Kerrang, and in my opinion it’s a great video with great editing techniques used. Also I want the my video to have a story behind it as I feel it draws the audience in and keeps them wanting to watch it to see how it ends.