Frame Analysis of an Existing Music Video Tanaka Bonde

Frame Analysis of an Existing Music Video

The following is an analysis from the still shot frames of an existing music video within the Rock music genre. We chose Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus because it is very similar to our own and though it isn't considered an indie song or band, the video is very traditional and has many similarities to the lyrics of our own song, mainly how it has the same story about a teenager struggling with the social hardships of school but maintains high spirits due to a love interest and a love of rock music.

The video is mainly narrative but also changes to the performance consistently. The video opens with an establishing shot, the high colour contrast and brightness suggests a childish perspective and the shot being a school confirms it will a character that attends the school and prepares the audience for what is to follow.

This medium-long shot shows the character, his dressing shows that he is not the typical rock musician but a normal teenager making him more believable as a character when considering the audience but his behaviour suggests the typical "nerd."

This long shot is essential as it shows the entire band in the performance part of the video but it also shows the place they perform, which is the school hall/gym and this is relevant to the story as most of the character's troubles occur at school thus making the performance and narrative connected.

This shot represents the character's rival/antagonist and him being on the left shows how he is sidelined but the broken bicycle most presents him and how he is frequently damaged by the larger car/bully. The low angle shot also emphasizes his inferiority and a shot like this sets the audience for the majority of what happens in the video.

Medium shot presents secondary character.

Medium shot shows the dominance of the antagonist by the slight low angle shot and the group around him that seem to protect him, forcing others to give way for his presence.

Seeing the frequent torment from the perspective of the main character through point-of-view shots allows the audience to better sympathize with the character and create contrast for his later success.

There are the frequent transitions to the performance side of the video which uses interesting shots such as a bird's eye view and blurred foreground to dramatize the performance, this greatly contrasts the slow pace and sad situation of the character in the narrative.

The final shots of the video are the end section of the video and are in a different setting during the school prom, the final act of the story as the narrative and performance are finally combined with the performing band from earlier supplying the music for the prom.

This song is very similar to our own song and as a result has a very close video to what we had planned. The video creates contrast as the character is weak and bullied at the beginning with no chance of the girl he dreams of but his torment is only to create contrast for his success later. Throughout the video, we watch the character under many difficult situations only for it to cut to the band who are narrating his situation through the music and they seem excited and enthusiastic.

These features are ideas we may use for our video such as the relevant way they were able to combine the narrative and performance for the last part of the song. The video uses certain icons such as clothing and behaviour to represent the antagonist and the protagonist, wealth and popularity that other teenagers can easily recognize. The use of the prom as the final act was relevant as this is when many people typically socialize during high school/ secondary school which is difficult for the main character thus a greater challenge for him which he is able to overcome. This gives us the idea of having our video split into a beginning where we introduce the characters, a middle where we present the conflict and finally and end where he must overcome this conflict to create a tight, simple story.