Drowning Pool’s music video for
their song Bodies is a great example of a video that is in a similar style to
many other hard rock / metal music videos. It shares many of the conventions
and techniques used in other music videos of songs within the same music genre.
The video mixes ‘as-live’ elements of Drowning Pool performing in a few
different locations (but without an audience) and elements of a narrative style
music video. The main ‘as-live’ performance parts of the video feature the band
playing in a large dark warehouse and also in what looks like a very small room
in a hospital. This latter location ties in with the narrative of the music video
which features a male patient in what can be assumed to be a psychiatric
hospital being taunted by the lead singer of Drowning Pool who is singing to
him. The video ends with the members of Drowning Pool appearing to help the man
leave the hospital, but actually they take him back to his room, where the
patient is already sitting. Is he mad? Why are there two of the patient? Is
this a dream? As with many music video narratives, it’s quite ambiguous.
The song is clearly about having
a very disturbed mind state. The repetition of ‘Nothing wrong with me’ and ‘Something’s
got to give’ suggest this is a song about feeling angry, particularly if you
feel trapped by society, and unable to express how you really feel and who you
really are. The lyrics have been interpreted by the music video creators as being
about a man who is literally trapped in an institution and is perhaps
struggling to come to terms with his demons or his past. Perhaps the repetition
of ‘Let the bodies hit the floor’ is a reference to the past of this patient,
when he went on some kind of murderous rampage. In this sense, the video
consolidates the song’s meaning because both the song and video seem to be
about a disturbed man. There are possible vague allusions to a film like One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which is also set in an asylum, but no clear
references. Similarly, there are no direct links to other artists, but the appearance
of Drowning Pool in terms of their hair, tattoos, performance style and dress
sense reminds of similar bands such as Korn, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.
In terms of
techniques, lip sync is used frequently in the video. It opens with the lead
singer whispering ‘let the bodies hit the floor’ into the ear of the patient,
combining both performance and narrative in the very first shot. We also see
the drummer lip synch some backing vocals and the patient from the narrative
lip synch the line ‘nothing wrong with me’ repeatedly. There is also cutting to
the beat frequently. From the opening lines of the song, the video cuts between
every repetition of ‘Let the bodies hit the floor’. There are many other points
in the video where it cuts on the drum beat or the strike of a guitar chord.
There are multi-image moments because Drowning Pool often appear to be
performing on the TV screen that the patient is watching in the hospital. There
is a strobing lighting effect used at some points when the band are performing
in the darkened warehouse and a fish-eye lens is used on some shots,
particularly when the band are performing in the small hospital room. The
strobe makes the editing and performance even more hectic and the fish eye lens
emphasises how small and claustrophobic the room is, particularly for a full
band to perform in. There are a lot of close-ups, particularly on the lead
singer and the patient in the narrative. The video is full of conventional
camera movements and angles; tracking around the drummer while playing, low
angles of the guitarists, wide shots of the whole band and quick cuts between
all of these.
I think it's a cool, if pretty conventional video, particularly for the editing and use of both performance and narrative elements.
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