Inspiration post: Music Video

Inspiration post: Music Video

For my inspiration I chose the music video for twenty one pilots ‘Holding On To You’. Due to the darkness of the video, the editing, the symbolism and the use of skeletal figures I found that this would be interesting to interpret into our coursework.

 

I chose this music video for inspiration as I found the symbolism used generates an air of immediacy to the artist. The video itself has the general story of someone holding on to some type of belief to overcome self-depreciating thoughts. The video seems to have a different meaning to everyone who watches it, some people will agree with my short analysis whilst others would disagree completely.  I find the concept intriguing as it gives everyone who watches it a fair chance to make their own interpretation making for a subjective video. I feel like we could use this idea in our film opening if we created a psychological horror as we could  create a dimension where the is a psychological element for the viewer.

The video stays located in the same room, which is badly lit with one main spotlight always focused on the lead singer, sometimes the drummer. The way the room is lit, the walls and corners aren’t visible and there is never any colour shown, this creates an uneasy tension as there is no closure but no limitation. This will conform with ideas about psychological horror as it makes the viewer think about what is happening and why these certain symbols are being used. I think that we can use this as inspiration for our final piece of coursework.

The symbolism in this music video is my main focus as I feel like we could use this idea in the filming of the coursework. In the video there are several dancers in several of the shots, all of them has individual skull painting on their face.

 This identifies them as the artists ‘bad thoughts’ as they are in some of the shots but not others. They also seem to vary in location as in some shots they are touching the singer whilst in others they are just in the background moving in jerky actions. This could be showing us how some of his thoughts are always dragging him down whilst others are constantly there, but in the back of his mind.

This is accompanied with fast changes in the camera angle and constant focusing in then out again making the whole shot blurry and jerky, supports the idea of the psychological element, as it is meant to represent unstableness that is usually present with an unpredictable character. It also makes you question what is coming next in the shot which develops the idea of unpredictability. I feel like we could use this editing technique in our coursework as it will create the desired effects of a psychological horror.

The most effective symbolism use in the video is when the artist is having an ‘internal’ battle with his ‘demons’. This is shown in the video as the singer, with a noose around his neck, trying to pull away from all the thoughts that are tugging at the rope.

There is also at the end of the video a shot where the artists own face is painted as a skull, this could be his way of conveying that sometimes you are your own demon. I find that this was effective as he accepted that he was his own problem sometimes and it gives for a powerful image.

We could use something more obvious like this or even something as simple as an animal for our coursework.  It might be a subtler approach but if we edit the scene in the right way we could create a similar sort of message.