ER: Inspiration Research

Inspiration from today's lesson

We looked at a variety of different videos in class for inspiration in techniques and ideas we could use for our own videos. The one that stuck out for me was "Live With Me" by Massive Attack.



It follows a story of a female alcoholic spiralling out of control all alone in her dingy flat. She appears to not have any one significant in her life and the set of her flat reflects a dark and lonely mood. Although the lyrics of the song have no relation to the story in the video (a disjunctive relationship), emotions like despair and sadness are shown in both. The video is aimed to shock its audience, for example seeing the amount of empty vodka bottles connotes that she's actually drank all that which is a awful amount of alcohol to be consumed. There is no dialogue in this video to show further that she is all alone left in this state. My favourite part of the video is when she is tumbling down an endless spiral staircase. This is a conceptual aspect of the video because the way her head bangs repeatedly on each step is a similar feeling to being drunk, and it also connotes her literally spiralling out of control with every drink. It ends with her lying on a bench, the final shot being a POV shot of the stars that she is gazing at from below. This is an effective ending as it puts the audience in her place at the end, leaving us to think about the shocking addictions people are going through.

London Grammar - Nightcall (2013)



I looked at London Grammar's "Nightcall" video for inspiration for our music video. Our group wanted to set ours in a natural environment like a field because of the recurring reference to animals in "Night Owls Early Birds".
This video is a conceptual and performance based video which are both ideas we would like to use. The band is present, lip syncing in a stationary position. There is little movement at all in this video as it mainly involves still objects and people like a swing, a car, a fire and a caravan. The only real sign of movement is the motion of the horses running into the darkness. The exaggerated stillness of everything in the video suggests a lot of hidden meaning making the video very conceptual. The lyrics and visual relationship are amplified because the darkness of the words match the darkness in the video. They share the same genre as our Foxes song, both electropop so a lot of characteristics can be taken from this because they are common of this genre, like the performance aspect and animal signifiers.