Goodwin's Analysis

Andrew Goodwin defined a music video as being of six characteristics. We have used the first four of these characteristics in our video, and we believe they are the most important.

1. We feel our video definitely relates to our genre, which is old/classic rock. Key elements of rock music are performance, black and white clothing, and unusual themes. Although the beginning of our video is not performance we have used much of it towards the end. This is because at the beginning we wanted it too seem like the band were running from the zombies and attacking them, and at the end we wanted the zombies to be the bands “fans” so therefore we performed at the end. We captured footage of performance from different angles and shots and we also included performances of us in the green screen we can be seen at the end of the video.

Performance:

Green screen:

Many classic rock videos and rock music from the 80s contain dark clothing such as boots and leather jackets which we included in our video to gives us the effect that we were an old rock band. The whole band are wearing black and white and we also added in aspects of red to make them stand out.

Matt's boots:

Liz's jacket:

2. In our video there some is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. When we came to edit our video, we tried to timeline them so that what Freddie in the song was singing, something to do with those lyrics was happening in the video. For example, when he sings “I’m gonna get you too” one of the zombies grabs the camera, as if she is going to get the viewer watching the video. As you can see here, she is just about the grab it:

Also, in the third chorus after the instrumental section, when Freddie sings “another one bites the dust”, this is the first time you see the band as zombies, which is as though the band have ‘bitten the dust’ as they have turned into the ‘dead’. Here, is the first moment you see the band, as zombies:

3. Again, there is some aspect of a relationship between the music and the visuals. We tried to edit the video so that the cut rate was slightly faster than that of a pop video. We cut up all of the clips of the zombies coming towards the band and mixed up the order so it wasn’t just one long clip of one zombie. We also tried to make it so that when some of the handclaps can be heard, we changed to a new clip. Also, when the tempo of the song got faster and the guitar is introduced, we speeded up what the band was doing, for example instead of walking we were running and attacking zombies.

4. Our video features many close ups. This was to advertise the band and to make them known by the viewers and we mainly featured close ups of the band’s instruments . We also captured close ups of the zombie’s for example there hands. The first shot you see of the first zombie is a close up of her hand, which gives a mysterious effect as the viewer doesn’t know what is going to happen or who or what they are.

5. We feel there is no notion of looking around using telescopes or screens with screens and there is no voyeurism due to the fact our video isn’t based around the idea of two different genders, it’s based around the idea of being two different states, the living and the dead and therefore we felt sexualisation of the female body in our video wasn’t necessary.

6. Although our video is based on performance like many other videos, we felt there wasn’t any obvious intertextual references in our video as we wanted to use unique ideas.