Music Video Research - DARE

Music Video Research
Artist: Gorillaz
Track: Dare
Director:  Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland


Camera/Editing:
The music video for this song, uses animated characters and setting with elements of real people. The editing has enabled the director to combine animated gorillas (linking to the name of the artist) and a human head, looking as if they both exist in the same world. To highlight these unusual circumstances, extreme close ups (ECU) are used when we see the real life human head singing to the camera and wide shots are used picturing the animated characters dancing, portraying that the video is set in an animated world.

Narrative:
An animated gorilla has a human head wired up in her bedroom. We see her play around with the wires and essentially plug the head in, at this point it beings to sing and the song starts, acting as if the head is like a radio or a speaker. This means that the song in the video seems to be non-diegetic, because the gorilla is dancing and singing along, like a teenager would in their room from songs through a speaker. Lots of colours are used, as the gorilla dances round the room creating a party atmosphere. Following this, is a shot of the man (human head) waking up in his own bed, connoting the last shots where a dream and a fragment of his imagination. As he falls back to sleep, the camera tracks to the right and we see another animated gorilla in his bed, before there is a quick cut back to the animated room, of the same gorilla waking up like the man did and suggesting that is was actually his dream. The underlying message could simply be that not everything is as it seems.

Conventional/Unconventional:
Aspects of both within the music video:
Conventional -
Performance/miming to the camera
Dancing
The use of musical instruments (band)
Pace and tempo of song are matched in the video and in time with each other
Unconventional -
Animation is used and as well as this, it is combined with real life
Lyrics of the song don't match the visuals in the song

What Works:
The animation combined with real life is really effective, because it creates a distorted image of reality in the video. The dancing to the song uses non-diegetic song, because the human head is acting as the music output and this is clever, because both the audience and animated character can hear it making the video seem more relatable within the unusual setting. Leading on from this, the only thing that doesn't really work, is that the music video is unrelated to the song, leaving the audience confused after watching, but the ending is unique, as it takes a cliche idea and puts a twist on it.