Music Video Analysis: Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye ft. Kimbra

This video is shown almost as a performance, in that the two artists are in the video singing to the audience. Not only is this something we had considered originally, but this may also be a convention used in Alternative music videos, however further research into analyzing music videos similar to this will prove this concept either correct or incorrect.

I also noticed the use of photography used in this video for the unusual and colourful shapes. It has been put together using photographs that have been taken constantly after so many strokes of paint have been applied to the shapes to give the effect of a video but in a slightly slower and more artistic way. These clips showing this photography based effect is shown mainly when there are no lyrics.

The use of super close ups in this video and fast cutting is used. The fast cutting occurs more frequently towards the end of the song when the pace picks up a little more. However, close are used throughout the video, although they do appear more so when the song gets a little faster. The close ups are used on the face mainly, but also on the colourful background and on the artists body as the photographic technique is being used with the application of the paint. Close ups, which show the shoulders and above, are also used throughout the video and for a large majority. Whereas mid shots, which show the waist upwards, are used at the end of the video as the paint seems to be disappearing from the female artist's body. This indicates that she is changing from what the male singer knows, which fit in with the lyrics in a fairly subtle but interesting way.

Music Video - Idea No.2

As our first idea for a music video didn't plan out quite as successfully as we had hoped, we swiftly moved on to our second idea.

The song choice we chose for this idea was "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye featuring Kimbra. We chose this song as we thought the lyrics had some depth that we felt would be good to work with, the song was also fairly upbeat without being too fast for our idea.

Our idea begins with a young man stepping into a phone booth, picking up the phone and dialing a number as the introduction of the song plays. A phone is then shown in a room of a house ringing, a young woman picking up the phone, but putting it on the side as to leave the man talking to himself. As the lyrics start, it cuts back to the man in the phone booth who begins to sing the lyrics, as if saying them down the phone. After a short while it cuts back to the house, where the girl is applying make up. Instead of showing her entire face, it'll do close ups of her eyes, lips and perhaps even just half of her face and she is doing so. In between these close ups there will be shots of the man walking as if to see her, all the while he is singing the lyrics. We are also considering showing a few shots of him at a train station or perhaps even on the train so that it shows he is travelling to see her after his attempts to talk to her.

After she has finished applying her make up, we will show clips of her picking up her bag and putting on her coat and walking out. She will then enter a room where a performance area will be with lighting. She will drop her bag, slip her coat off and walk into the middle of the stage-like setting. She will begin to perform ballet along to the music, it'll most likely be shown in slow motion as we think this will give a more dramatic effect. We have also decided to test the lighting in our location to see if we can find a way to set the lighting in order to show the girl's silhouette but not show her face (so that it is just a black silhouette of her dancing). We think this will add to the dramatic effect and will therefore work better with the song choice, as it's slow with a little more of a faint but upbeat tune.

In between clips of her dancing, the man is shown making his way to the location where the girl is dancing, this will perhaps be shown by showing him walking in the same places that she had been walking in order to get there. As he arrives he opens the door and sees the lights on. He walks up to the stage curtain, as he gets closer it will have fast cuts between the girl dancing and him getting closer. Only the last few shots will show him finally reaching the curtain, opening it and a shot behind him showing the empty floor where she had just been, with the lights still on. The music will finish and he'll be left in this stage room on his own. Possibly the final clip will show the girl walking away.

Music Video - Idea No.1

As our ideas for our advertisement didn't go as we had hoped, we later decided that creating a music video may be a good alternative. We soon chose our song which was "Mad World" by Gary Jules. We had decided to gather both video footage that had been used on the News, such as incidents of 9/11 and the earthquakes in Japan, and also film our own footage of what we felt would fit into the song. Our overall idea for the video was that it would be a montage of video footage.

However, we soon found problems with our idea as we began to find it difficult to find suitable footage for us to film and found it far too easy to find news footage. We decided that also using footage that hadn't been taken by ourselves may cause complications and may not be appropriate.