Radio Head Music Video Analysis

In class we watched the music video for "Street Spirit" by Radiohead. While watching it, we took down notes for it and then broke the video into sections that we could use to look at each aspect in detail.

Mise en Scene
- The video was set in a trailer park in what appeared to be an American desert.
-All the clothes worn by the band were fairly plain, boring and unmemorable.
-The video was shot in low key lighting.

Camera Angles
-There were some shots that had high angles and low angles
-The majority of the frames we midshots with a flat angle.
-Most of the shots of the band were also front facing the band.

Movment
-The shots in this video were stills of the performance.

Transitions
-The transitions were all either straight cuts or dissolves and fades.

Special Effects
-Slow motion shots
-Some shots are overlapped and made to look like one shot with half the screen moving at a different speed to the other side
-There is a greyscale filter used throughout this video.
-Certain shots have a black background overlayed.
-The lead singer's arm was removed for no obvious reason.

Order of Narrative
-There is no continuety editing in this video.
-The video has a mix of narrative and perfomance.
-No clear link between some of the shots exist, making it appear random.

Pace
-The video uses a lot of shots that make give it a very slow pace.
-Slow motion shots are used to emphasize this.

Framing
-The lead singer in the band is often framed to be bigger in the shot than the rest of the band, promoting a specific star image.
-The frame is also divided several times into three, following the rule of thirds to split up the band.