Friday 11 October 2013

Video Narrative

The video opens to a shot of the morning sky, showing clips of trees & leaves with the sun or sky visible in most shots, signifying summer & light. This continues for 26 seconds, until the instrumental introduction ends and becomes vocals. 

When the line 'there's some teenage smell to summer' is sung, there is a mid-shot of the performer sleeping in a dark room with the sun streaming through a crack in the curtains. We see the main character, a teenage boy, slowly sit up in bed, lit only by the natural morning light in lingering close-ups of his face. 

At the line 'woke up with rocks inside my heart', the performer moves to sit on the edge of the bed, and eventually walks towards the window with shots of his feet moving and his face in profile looking outside. At this point the song is 52 seconds in, and the first verse has ended. 

The next verse opens with the line 'I've got that anxious little fever, but I've found a way to sweat the sadness out', and at this point we see the performer in a new location, a mid-shot of him deciding whether or not to leave the house. The scene is still lit only by natural light falling on a small part of the shot, with the rest of the scene in darkness. There is a closeup of him turning the door handle and walking outside, shot from behind his feet. 

The camera moves to a perspective beyond the house's front door, showing the boy walking outside, in possibly an over-exposed shot to amplify the contrast in the lightness of this scene and the darkness of the previous scene. The camera tracks the character as he walks down a street, until this verse ends with 'so I guess you'd better take me out' at 1:16. 

At this point, the song becomes instrumental again until 1:43. In this part of the video, the character continues to walk, with shifting shots of his movement in varying angles and lengths, interspersed with abstract cutaways of bubbles being blown & psychedelic fractal animations. 

At 1:43, we see the character from behind entering a park setting, becoming visibly more nervous as he slowly approaches a group of about six teenagers sitting in a circle. He doesn't yet move close enough to interact with them, and at 2:09, after the line 'soundless circular white suck up the seas', the setting changes to the performer singing in a room against a white wall, with psychedelic animations being projected onto him. This continues throughout the slower part of the song, for about 30 seconds until 2:40 where the instrumental part starts again. 

At this point we see the performer sitting with the group of people, with the sun visible behind his head, and the song ends at 3:36 with a long shot panning up from the characters face to the sun, fading to white.

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