Music Video Research

Location & Story line:  the  establishing shot for the video my hero is set in what appears to be an American style neighborhood , straight away the connotation of America show us a direct link between the video and the song, the word America describes a united nation who think highly of their armed forces. Hero is a commonly used word when talking about the men and women putting their lives at risk for a country . this noticeable link between the song and visuals is a key element that is  expected in music video.  the  foo fighters demonstrate genre characteristics of rock by involving the subject of war and heroism into their video’s.

    Another relationship  between the lyrics and visuals denotes  characteristics of a music video. The location shows a built area  of flats in what could a residential estate . the connotations  of residential show a common working class family  who live in an urban area. Showing the lives of working class link to the repeated word “ordinary” the songs chorus, the fact that the word linked is used in the chorus show the words importance as the chorus of a song is the main focus and holds the main message which in this case is that ordinary people are influential unnoticed hero’s.

Costumes: a long shot of  the main  character in the narrative  shows an standard white male  in an average costume, consisting of dark jean, trainers and a red t-shirt. The casual costume is used to amplify the ordinary status of the character. But the colour of his costumes is used to amplify his heroism and contradict  the stereotypical characteristics of his status( working class). connotations of the colour red  scream danger this is used in relation to the situation he is putting him self in , running into a burning building to save his child and neighbors dog. The fire its self symbolises, danger and control,. Just like the fire the character has no control over the situation therefor making it more dangerous further more amplifying  the heroic act of an ordinary person. The constant visual  reference to danger and heroes shows stereotypical characteristics within the rock genre

Performance:  Foo Fighters used rock genre characteristics by combining a storyline with a band performance , the band are featured playing interments( another genre characteristic ) in the living room of the burning building which the brave man runs through, this take the combination to the extreme as it would be unusual for the a band to  be playing in a room of your house whilst you were doing day to day activities. Further more Dave Gorhl’s face is pictured on the T.V set which  shows There is frequently reference to the notion of looking, the audience looking through a ( tv, computer ) screen which is looking at a screen of the band.. also many close up shots of the band are used to put emphasis on the artist or bands faces usually for promotional  reason.

Notes:  My Hero is the song we'll be using for the music video, looking at the video overall it has the typical Foo Fighters video style going on, for example unusual scenraios and some comedy effects. Overall the video is amazing but we want to make it different and unique, however we're planning on using traits that the Foo Fighters use, so a comedy factor and unusual editing styles.

Whilst deciding on which song we wanted to make a music video we looked at a wide range of rock bands and their music videos. bands such as Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Biffy Clyro, Weezer, Sum 41, Blink 182 were all considered. However we chose Foo Fighters because looking at their music videos they had a comedy effect seen in their videos and their videos somehow always seemed to have relation with the lyrics in the song in a quite unusual way, this caught our attention and from this we came up for many ideas we could use for this song 'My Hero'