The video that my group has chosen to do a detailed analysis upon is the recent video of Eliza Doolittle – Pack up. The reasons this video was chosen was the feel good atmosphere it induces to the viewers, the summer time when the sun is shining on your face etc. The video is set in the country of Jamaica. As the video starts you see a person throw a suitcase from an old farm yard truck, instantly the artist opens this suitcase and then emerges from it. This was an original, twist which was never seen before in any music video. The view that surrounded this scene was of long dry grass, also high key lighting was incorporated creating the happy and fresh look. Using this, it helped to portray the theme of the video from the start as a ‘hippie’ and reggae style of music.
As the video goes on you see the artist use a number of old time vehicles associated with mainly the 60-70’s era where again being ‘hippie’ was the in-thing. She enters a old looking bus transporting local people. She was also seen riding on the back of a 70’s vespa Italian scooter. The use of these vehicles helped with the mise-en-scene to again create the time of the era I mentioned before, to show viewers that the artist is in a time period where ‘there wasn’t a care in the world’. Which moulds in with the whole theme of the video. Finally on this point the whole filming was done outdoors using natural lighting and maybe inducing high key lighting to brighten the shot even more.
The location of the different scenes varied from an open field to a laundrette to a stage. The use of a laundrette was to show an important meeting place and milestone in many old communities, as washing machines were not invented. In this scene the lighting is semi natural due to the light coming from the windows. You also see the first performance of the video were a young worker at this laundrette picks up a broom and starts to dance to the chorus of the song, he is framed by two walls either side holding laundry. The camera shots are varied in this shot from extreme close up to see the expression of the dancers face to medium-long shot showing the framing and finally it’s a canted angles shot from a tall corner of the room. These variation in shots helps show different angles of the performance.
The final scene is a performance on a stage. So far throughout the video there is no narrative or hardly any. Firstly there is a wide shot showing the band that is playing the song, then you see the artist on the step of the stage being framed by the band themselves. It then cuts to a high angled shot showing the artist mingling and dancing with a crowd of people in the dance hall were the performance is being carried out. It then fades to scene on the beach were she then dances and shows a long shot of her in a boat sailing off as the song fades.
As with any music video there are a lot of fast-cut editing. The editing is mainly traditional, to that focusing mostly on the artist. There are few or no transitions between each shot due to that none is needed because of the theme of that its different shots of the artist being happy whilst singing the song.
The lip syncing is of a professional due to the video is a professionally made, there are no mistakes and it fits perfectly with the words of the song.
In the end you notice that the video is mostly illustrative more than performance based, even though some performance elements are incorporated more so are the illustrative elements. You see more of things linked to the music being portrayed than that of the artist herself performing.
Some of these ideas are going used as inspiration pieces for our video as we are also doing a song that bases around the ‘feel good era’.
