6b. Rising Appalachia- Scale Down Analysis

Rising Appalachia- Scale Down Analysis

This can be seen as a typical music video, as the atmosphere of the track and the lyrics are directly associated with the feel of the film, I am going to look at the mise en scene, cinematography, sound and editing to see how they have achieved this effect.

The video begins with very short takes that change perfectly to the beat of the song, this includes lots of close ups upon objects so that it is hard to tell what they are, but the texture is very apparent. For example they have close ups of flowers, a husky and canvas sheets. This works together to create the initial ambiance of the music video.  A long take pan has been used as the first lyrics come in, although there is a woman in the shot, the fact that it pans across pays more attention to the lens flare that is present than the woman, this is the beginning of a music video filled with play on light.

The video now cuts to a completely new scene, a long shot of a hill, with one woman running towards the other. As she is running jump cuts have been applied, to the beat of the song, making her seem like she is being controlled by the music. After the jump cuts slow motion has been used to make the video seem dreamlike.  There is a recurring theme of nature that runs throughout the track, A mid shot of the singer as she lip syncs her own song is transformed via a focus pull to a tree in front, showing the connection between nature and the song. This also reflects the costumes, which are ethereal and earthy, including a multitude of feathers, canvas and dreadlocks, which all have earthy connotations attached to them. One clip which recurs throughout the track is the two woman holding canvas sheets with the lyrics of the song painted on, this shows relation between the lyrics and the video and we can see the two start to intertwine. This is a technique I would like to use in my own music video.

There are large numbers of close up on the women’s mouths as they are lip syncing to the song, this almost forces the viewer to focus upon the texture of the oral imagery and lyrics of the song. Also when the voices layer on top of each other in the song, two video clips have been made less opaque and layered on top of each other which not only creates a dreamlike feel, also allows the viewer to see two different areas at once, expanding the depth of the music video, these clips change to the beat of the song.

When the video returns to a long shot of the two women up on the hill, one of them runs and the other stands, the long shot used with the slow motion is to show the contrast between stillness and movement of the two people. The music video has tried to capture contrast between light and dark as well as this as lots of different lighting techniques have been injected into the video, providing an array of different elements of natural and artificial lighting, including candles, lens flare, fire and fire poi. The fire poi is introduced into the video when the lyrics stop and there is an instrumental, this is to raise the impact of the storyline and keep the viewer captivated, as attention is often lost when the lyrics are dropped.  Slow motion has been used during the fire poi scenes, which seems to defy gravity as they fly through the air to the beat of the song, making the actors seem very talented and adding some ‘wow factor’ into the video.

Towards the end of the song, the lyrics and instrumentals start to get noticeably repetitive, this has been visually reflected in the video, using graphic matches upon people’s faces, repeating the same oval shape over and over as the song progresses. As the song draws to a close and begins to fade out, the two woman stand on the hill and together stare directly into the camera, engaging with the viewer in an almost menacing way, as though they are warning you to listen to the message in the song, which is about the environment, and what we can do to help. The message was reflected in the video with all of the connotations towards nature, plus it was simple with no big props.

Through the use of editing, cinematography, sound and mise en scene, the director has managed to create a music video that is directly linked to the morals and atmosphere of the song.