Drowning Pool - Bodies Music Video Analysis

I'm teaching music video again at the moment, and I thought I'd throw up (literally) a quick music video analysis to give my students an idea of what I'm after from them. They've got to analyse five different videos in terms of the style, conventions and techniques used. Here's my example for them, but before you read it, please give the video a watch!

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.   

For LOTS more on music videos, click here!

Homage music videos

Another style of music videos is similar to parody in that the music video imitating something but in the case of homage, the mimicking is designed to pay tribute or show respect. Whereas parody is used to mock a media product or star, homage is used to show respect.

An excellent example of a music video that uses homage is The Kill by 30 Seconds to Mars. This video uses locations, themes and iconography from the popular classic horror film The Shining. The band perform in a hotel very similar to The Overlook hotel featured in The Shining and the lead singer sits at a typewriter just as Jack Nicholson’s character who is a writer does in the film.

Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins is another example of a music video that pays homage to another piece of media. In this case, the music video pays respect to the Georges Melies early silent film The Voyage to the Moon. This is widely credited as being one of the first ever science fiction films and the beginning of movie special effects. Tonight, Tonight features a similar narrative to the film with the iconic moon with a face imitated and aliens that blow up into puffs of smoke when they are hot by the characters.

A final example that also pays homage in its style is the X Factor Finalists music video for Heroes. This was a charity single that pays respect to the soldiers who have been fighting in recent wars. There are many photos of soldiers and videos of the finalists meeting some of them. It is a tribute to the heroes of war which perfectly complements the lyrics of the song and ties in with the charitable intentions of the single.

What are your favourite homage music videos?

Check out my other posts:

• Surrealist music videos 
• Narrative music videos
• music genres
• as live/in concert
• animated music videos
• Parody music videos

Parody Music Videos

Another common style of music video is to parody existing pieces of media or stars that are well known to the target audience. Parody is where something is imitated in order to mock it, often by exaggerating features. Eminem uses lots of parody in his music videos, often by dressing up as well known celebrities and stars and making a mockery of them.

In the video for Just Lose It, Eminem dresses up like Michael Jackson in order to mimic and mock him. His nose falls off (a reference to Jackson’s plastic surgery) and he has children jumping up and down on his bed (a reference to his alleged child abuse). Eminem also dresses up like MC Hammer in the iconic trousers he wears and he even parodies his own film 8 Mile and the music video for Lose Yourself which accompanied it. Eminem’s lyrics are often offensive to other pop stars and therefore this style of video suits his persona, image and songs perfectly. His fans will find the parody funny and hopefully spread the word about the video and the silliness within it.

Blink 182 also parody boy band music videos, specifically the Backstreet Boys in their video for All the Small Things. They dress in the same clothes; dance and lip synch in the same locations but also undermine the sexiness of the boy band stars by messing with their appearance and sitting on the toilet while singing.

Another example of a parody music video is Pink’s Stupid Girls in which she dresses up as Beyonce and Jessica Simpson and imitates their music videos in order to put across her message that many female stars are silly for exploiting their sexuality in their videos. This parody has a clear message and is designed to make young women see the silliness of trying to be like certain women in the media.

A final example is the sensation Gangnam Style. This video went viral and became the most watched video on YouTube ever due to its iconic dance moves and tongue in cheek humour. Psy copies many music video conventions such as having wind and fake snow blown in his face to make him look cool and attractive but then the fake snow fills his mouth and eyes and makes it comical. The whole video is in essence mocking people who think they are Gangnam Style (wealthy, upper class) but actually are not.

Weird Al Yankovic is also known for creating parody songs and his videos also often parody the original music video of the song he is mocking. A good example of this is I’m Fat that parodies the Bad video.

What are your favourite parody music videos?

Check out my other posts:

• Surrealist music videos 
• Narrative music videos
• music genres
• as live/in concert
• animated music videos

Surrealist music videos

Music videos that have a surreal style are those influenced by the surrealist movement. Surreal works of art, including music videos, are designed to be unnerving and illogical, containing the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions. They are meant to be expressions of the unconscious mind and therefore are filled with strange and dream like imagery.

Chris Cunningham is a director of many extremely strange and unsettling surrealist music videos. Some are like nightmares, more disturbing than many horror films and filled with weird imagery. His videos for Aphex Twin, most notably Come to Daddy and Rubber Johnny are filled with freakish characters. Come to Daddy features an old women in a grim urban landscape being terrorised by a group of little girl’s running riot on the estate. The little girls all have exactly the same grinning faces, that of an adult man (actually the face of Aphex Twin himself), creating a very disturbing and strange juxtaposition. The music is very hectic and industrial sounding and this helps to give a very unforgettable and unsettling vibe to the music video.

Less disturbing, but equally surreal, are the videos for Radiohead’s Street Spirit and Coldplay’s The Scientist. Street Spirit features a combination of slow motion and sped up footage (sometimes in the same shot) and all sorts of nonsensical and strangely placed imagery such as jumping nuns in a trailer park. It is all black and white and the song is very slow, adding to the surreal and dream like status of the video. It was made by Jonathan Glazer, the director behind the brilliant horses in the surf Guiness advert. There are similarities in the way the music video and advert are shot, showing a clear link between the two mediums.

Coldplay’s The Scientist is less surreal perhaps and more linear in its storytelling though the the narrative is told completely backwards. The footage has been reversed leading to much that is strange and unexpected. The most surreal juxtapostition though is that lead singer Chris Martin appears to lip sync the song even though the footage is in reverse. He had to learn to lip sync the song backwards in order to achieve this.

Surreal videos, if done well, will last long in the memory of viewers and can perfectly suit certain types of music. The sad music of Radiohead and Coldplay is fitting in creating a dream like atmosphere while the harsher more hectic sounds of Aphex Twin make the perfect soundtrack to a nightmare.

What are your favourite surrealist music videos?

Narrative Music Videos

Narrative music videos are those that tell a story. There are many different ways a story can be told in a music video. A narrative can be edited alongside the performance of the artist so that the video cuts back and forth between elements of performance and narrative. Sometimes the artist can be involved in the narrative in some way and can even be lip synching as they act in the narrative. In other examples the artist can be performing in the same location as the narrative is occurring. Having a narrative generally means there is a clear beginning, middle and end but sometimes narratives can be a bit more abstract and actually the narrative progresses very little from the start to the finish.

Narrative music videos often help to tell the story that is already present in the lyrics of the song and other times the narrative is more of an open interpretation of the lyrics or seems almost completely unrelated. Narratives engage the audience by providing enigmas and mystery. Audience will want to see how the stories will end because they will have questions they want answering.

An example of a very cinematic narrative music video is Eminem’s Stan, featuring the actor Devon Sawa playing an obsessed fan and also Dido and Eminem who sing and rap in the song. The video follows the story present in the lyrics of the song from Stan writing letters to Eminem to eventually killing himself and his girlfriend. Devon Sawa plays Stan and he lip synch’s Eminem’s lyrics until the last verse where Eminem is writing a letter back and then he appears in the video. It references Eminem’s fame and his problems with obsessive fans and the lighting makes and subject matter make it feel almost like a horror film. This video even has some of the sound effects from the narrative audible in the song such as the car splashing into the river.

The music video for Just by Radiohead sets up a very big enigma. A man lies in the street but will not tell anyone why. Throughout the video the audience will be questioning what the problem is with the man and what will happen. The performance of Radiohead is intercut between the narrative scenes and it also becomes clear that the room that Radiohead are performing in overlooks the street where the man is lying. It has a kind of twist ending that will hopefully surprise the audience. This sense of surprise will also likely be present by the end of The Scientist by Coldplay which all plays out in reverse.

eminem - stan from Im Daebum on Vimeo.

What are your favourite narrative music videos? 

More on styles, conventions and techniques of music videos:

• Surrealist music videos
• Animated music videos
• music genres
• as live/in concert
• Parody music videos 
• Homage music videos

Animated Music Videos

Another popular style of music video is using animation techniques Some use cartoon animation, some use stop motion animation and others use digital animation. Sometimes the artist is represented performing in animated form and other times there is a narrative featured using animation.

My students and I are looking at different style of music videos and we have already looked at a couple of different music genres, and as-live or in concert music videos so far.

Animated music videos can often be very eye-catching and allow the impossible to be achieved. Cartoon animation can range from the simplistic child-like drawings of the music video for Nizlopi’s JCB song to the anime style of Linkin Park’s Breaking The Habit. If the artist is performing in animated style, then lip synching can still be included. In the case of the Linkin Park music video, this was achieved by filming the band’s performance and then rotoscoping it. This is where animators use the real footage as the basis for their animation. Take on Me famously mixed live action with cartoon animation.

Stop motion animated music videos are still very popular despite the increase of digital animation. They allow very imaginative ideas to be brought to life. Stop motion is the process of taking many still images and putting them together to create the impression of a moving image. It can make lip synching difficult but many stop motion music videos have achieved it. Plan B’s video for No Good took seven days to shoot on a stills camera and is particularly creative for its use of lip synching.  This ‘was achieved by Levi shooting Plan B performing the track on a DV camera, then output the footage at 12 frames per second and printed a book of all 2,800 frames, which became their lip-synch bible. “Every frame we shot we showed him the relevant page of the book and he mimicked the shape of his mouth on that page for the shot,” says Daniel.’’’ (www.britishcouncil.org/antenna_uk_transcript_english.doc)

Other examples include Oren Levi and Her Morning Elegance, early example Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel and Coldplay’s Strawberry Swing.

Plan B - "No Good" by czapizzle

Finally digital animation is the most recent form of animation to be used in music videos. It is the same principal as other forms of animation with fluid motion being created frame by frame but now on computers. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers use digital animation for their video for Californication to make it look like a video game.

As always there are many more examples out there and I would be very grateful if anyone could point me in the direction of any better examples of animated videos and perhaps I can add them to this post.

More in this series on the styles, conventions and techniques of music videos:

• Surrealist music videos
• Narrative music videos
• music genres
• as live/in concert
• Parody music videos 
• Homage music videos

In concert and As-live Music Videos

Following on from my discussion of music genres and their different styles of video, I will now look at other styles of music videos. A very common style of music video is the in concert or as-live video. In concert videos are where a director puts together a music video from one or more live shows. Clips from the gigs are edited together and usually put to a professionally recorded version of the song. Sometimes the audio will actually be from the live performance but usually not.

As-live music videos on the other hand still have the artist performing in front of a crowd but the performance has been set up specifically for the production of the music video. Both of these styles showcase the energy or emotion of a live performance of the band, making them look popular as they have an audience and also helping the band to hopefully sell more concert tickets.

A huge range of camera angles are used in these styles of video as if the band’s performance has been captured from every possible angle. The camera work and editing will often reflect the pace of the music and the energy of the performance. There is still a great deal of focus on the lead singer but often there are plenty of shots of the audience too. Fans of the band can then see other fans on screen in their videos and can feel a sense of camaraderie. Often as-live videos will be more experimental in their camerawork such as in the video for Chop Suey by System of a Down.

In as-live videos, the location the performance is shot in will also be relevant. For example Sum 41’s Fat Lip is filmed in a skate park which will no doubt appeal to much of the target audience. In the video for Paradise City, Guns N Roses are filmed in real stadium concerts at the height of their popularity, showing just how incredible and huge their success has been.

Often the live performances might be intercut with other images. For example The Omen by Prodigy has a creepy little girl wandering through the crowd, Paradise City has backstage footage of the band and Papa Roach’s Last Resort has inserted shots of the fans in the crowd at home in their bedrooms. Coldplay’s Fix You starts with the lead singer wandering the streets and then ends with the band playing live.

What are your favourite in concert or as live music videos? I'm always on the look our for more examples from a range of music genres as I know some of my students will not be fans of my taste in music though I do try to include and refer to a range. I even put that horrible man Chris Brown on here.

Music Genres and Music Video Conventions

Different genres of music have different styles of music video. Rock music videos are generally very different to rap videos and dubstep videos, but similar across many sub-genres of rock such as videos for metal songs and punk songs. My students on the BTEC Media course have to write about the style of one genre of music.

Here I will look at a couple of different genres. Firstly rock videos are often very much based around an as-live performance of the band. The videos below of Green Day, Foo Fighters and Slipknot all show this. Often the performance will make up the entire video as in American Idiot where a single location has been used. Similarly in Before I Forget only one location is used. On the other hand in Best of You, there is a few locations used but the video keeps returning to the main location throughout the video. This video also has added insert shots that are quite surreal and quickly cut in to add something to the video apart from performance. It is almost like cutting to a narrative but these images appear almost random but no doubt have some element of lyric interpretation in them.

Rock videos often focus heavily on the sight of the band playing their instruments; the guitars and the drums are often filmed at key moments in the song. The lead singer usually gets more screen time and close ups than the rest of the band, as seen in both the Green Day and Foo Fighters songs. This means there can be a lot of lip synching and the audience can clearly identify the ‘leader’ of the band and see their emotions as they sing the song. The Slipknot video beautifully subverts this by never showing any of the band members’ faces. They are known for their masks at live gigs and in their other videos but in this video they are unmasked but their faces are never shown. This keeps their fans interested and waiting to see the elusive faces of the stars.

Other common techniques are the use of slow motion and quick, hectic cuts and cutting to the beat of the songs. The band are often filmed from a low angle to make them appear important or to give the viewer of the video and audience-eye-view like at a live gig. American Idiot also features the band being filmed within the video and we see them on a screen within a screen. This idea of being watched/filmed is often present in music videos. Rock videos are often dark and the band members dress in a fashion that would appeal to the target audience, often in dark clothing.

Rap videos on the other hand are very different. The examples below show two of the main differences in gangster rap videos. Both work on strict stereotypes of African American males but Candy Shop shows 50 Cent as extremely popular with a wide selection of scantily clad females who are there to dance and look sexy. It also makes him look incredibly wealthy and successful. Amusingly it then undercuts all this by showing it all to be a dream at the end.

Still DRE on the other hand plays up the ‘street’ style, emphasising that the rappers are from the ‘hood’, still popular with the ladies but despite their wealth and success, still rapping about being real gangsters on the streets of LA. There is a focus on cars and girls' bodies throughout. In both these rap videos the artists are dressed appropriately for the genre and they lip sync to camera for much of the video.

There are many other music genres that could be explored and I hope that some of my students will take on more modern music genres such as Grime and Dubstep to discuss if a style has emerged in music videos for these types of music.