Welcome to my A2 Media Studies Blog. The brief is: to produce a music video, a digipak cover, and magazine advert for the digipak. Throughout the course we will be learning about conventions (general and genre specific) used for each of these products.

Thursday, 11 August 2011

RM - Pendulum - The Island: Part 1 Dawn Deconstruction

Artist: Pendulum
Song: The Island – Part 1 Dawn
Genre: Drum and Bass
Audience: 14-24
Year Released: 2010

Pendulum’s “The Island – Part 1 Dawn” is a concept music video with elements of performance featuring the lead vocalist.
The first few shots in this music video combine to make a sequence of establishing shots. This allows audience to view the setting of the remote location featured in the video. As well as this how the video has been edited makes it look like it is a short film this is done by setting the scene and also by the white text fading in on screen. Many other bands have done this concept for a music video but normally in a trailer format two examples of this is Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” and My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)”.

Illusion of a male vocalist
After this sequence of shots the video mainly features on two people; a woman, protagonist, who is exploring the “island” whilst following another figure, it appears both people are wearing the same outfits it, and what appears to be an illusion of a male vocalist, this illusion is in fact the lead vocalist of the band Rob Swire, who is lip-syncing throughout the video. Thus being a common convention of a music video. The illusion is emphasized to the audience by the use of special effects which blur the face of the lead vocalist. The two elements are linked together with the use of shot-to-shots.

Protagonist being chased by herself
Throughout the video there is a variety of shots used, most of these are close-ups of the protagonist and vocalist, but also there is a lot of shots which are extreme long shots, point of views and over the shoulders this allow the audience to gain a prospective of the location as well as the protagonists view on the situation. The situation the protagonist is in includes a woman wakening up not knowing where she is, whilst she is looking for clues she spots a figure in the distance that appears to be dressed the same, which she decides to chase. This chase takes her over mountains and passing reflective triangles. It is not known who she is chasing until the very end of the music video where this narrative enigma is revealed. Thus allows the audience to find out the protagonist is in a paradox and she is in fact chasing herself.

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