Friday 7 January 2011

The Smiths - Panic

This video is deliberately messy and unattractive. The band always made a comment that they didn’t want to be mainstream and commercialised, so they made a strange, slightly abstract video. The lack of any lip-syncing and no images of the iconic front man Morrissey is because of the same reason. He never posted himself on the front of the album covers etc and didn’t feel the need for any exposure. The hazy filming also links with the lyrics of “panic” well.



Throughout the video, there are constant flicks between different images, back and forth and in an unordered manner. The editing is really quick which makes it difficult to make out what is going on, which is quite effective as it stands out. The hazy black and white filter also helps this as again it is difficult to make out the images, thus we focus on the music itself, which is the main thing to this band.

The two shots that can be made out are the first person tracking shot and the circling pan shot of the male. The first person tracker is of someone with their arm outstretched, in a hurry, which is created by a fast forward editing technique. The other shot is a fast forwarded rotation around a central figure, which I think could be a good shot to use to establish your character, in a more 360 degree manner, although this isn’t really the impact this video is aiming for.

what I can take from this?
The extremely quick editing looks effective to convey a person’s current mental state, when used in conjunction with first person. This would be extremely effective if used to convey anger, confusion or possibly intoxication.

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