H.P. - Metanarrative Comparison

Metanarrative Comparison - Bellowhead and George Ezra

Bellowhead – Contemporary folk band, outside the mainstream.

George Ezra – Pop/Rock/Blues/Folk artist, within the mainstream.

Andrew Goodwin’s theory about music videos, taken from his book ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ is a selection of signifiers that help to determine how conventional a music video is. I will use this theory to describe why Bellowhead’s video is outside the mainstream, and why George Ezra’s video is within the mainstream.

Goodwin Analysis – 

10,000 Miles by Bellowhead (O’Reilly, 2012)

This song and video are part of the Contemporary Folk Genre

• The video features narrative fuzz, with intercut shots of the band playing and a brief narrative involving the band members dressed as pirates attacking a picnic.

• The cutting rate is regular throughout the video, with an amplified relationship between the music and the visuals as many of the cuts take place over beats in the music, e.g. the first cut when the view of the lake appears after the initial black screen.

• The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals are also amplified, as they do not correspond to each other directly, but similar themes appear in both. E.g. visual ideas of the sea, ships, an older time period in the lyrics, and the lake and pirates in the video.

• The camera is handheld for the majority of the video, giving it a sense of realism and constructing para-social intimacy with the artists.

• There is a roughly equal amount of time devoted to narrative shots and meat shots, with the two lines of action intercepting towards the end of the video. This gives the band prevalence throughout the video, promoting their image, but also giving an emphasis to the track and its style over the promotion of the band image, as is fairly typical of artists outside the mainstream.

• There is a low proportion of close ups, most of the video features shots of the band members, but of these shots most are action shots at medium or long length, very few are close ups. This further presents the band as unconcerned with image, even though they are likely to give some care to it, it is the appearance of not caring which gives the artists their charm in the video, appearing very care-free.

• The 4^th wall is broken on a few occasions, as band members sing to the camera or play music to the camera. There is also a sense of informality about the whole video, making it feel like a home video in which all the band members are fully aware of the camera. This is another contributor to the construction of the band’s care free and ‘normal’/’present’ image.

Goodwin Analysis – 

Budapest by George Ezra (2014)

This song and video is part of the Folk/Rock/Pop genres.

• The video is lit in a mixture of high and low key setups, resulting in high contrasting patches. This is used to highlight the artist within the crowd of extras in the scene, making sure that he is present and obviously visible in almost every shot.

• The non-verbal communication of the crowd supplies the narrative fuzz in the video, as the majority of them stand, not talking or interacting with anyone, and ignore the artist for much of the video. This gives the artist the appearance of normality, being just one in the crowd, but the focus of numerous close ups on him and the focusing of the lighting on him imply that he is also ‘special’, or ‘abnormal’.

• There is an amplified relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the lyrics occasionally corresponding to images on screen, for example “my many artifacts” is met with an image of one of the men in the crowd holding a china vase.

• The relationship between the music and visuals is also amplified, with cuts often taking place on beats or chord changes. An example of this is a slightly sped up section featuring the crowd putting on glasses so that the end of their movements coincides with the next significant beat in the track.

• There is a fairly high proportion of close ups with the artist, and these often feature him looking directly into the camera, breaking the 4^th wall and constructing para-social intimacy with the viewer. This promotes the ‘brand image’ of the artist by creating a relationship between the artist and the viewer, pushing their style and performance and acting as an advert for them.

• The video is both concept and performance based, with the artist performing throughout the video within the crowd. The concept being explored is the crowd surrounding the artist and how they interact with each other and with the artist.

Goodwin Comparison

The video for the band Bellowhead features vocals over visuals, in the sense that it pushes the relatability and normativity of the artists instead of creating a strong, conventional mainstream brand image. This is the opposite for the video for George Ezra, in which the proportion of close ups and prevalence of the artist in comparison to the other actors in the video create a strong product image for the artist, advertising him as a person. In light of this, it would be appropriate to say that the music video for George Ezra’s Budapest is conventional of mainstream music, and the video for Bellowhead’s 10,000 Miles is unconventional in a mainstream setting. 

Richard Dyer’s ‘star theory’ suggests that stars are constructs made to represent ‘real people’, but they themselves are not real and stand above others. His theory addresses Audiences and Institutions, Constitutions and Hegemony. I will be using this theory to compare George Ezra and Bellowhead, and to give reasoning to why I believe Ezra to be a ‘Star Construct’ and Bellowhead to be less of a construct.

Dyer Comparison – 

• Both artists exhibit the star quality of creativity. Ezra’s video features an original concept of the crowd interacting but also ignoring the artist, whereas the home video style of Bellowhead’s video gives it the appearance of originality. The two artists are similar in the sense that neither show many other key ‘star quality’ signifiers, which is unconventional for Ezra as his music is within the mainstream.

• Ezra’s video however, does establish him as a construct, by using the crowds around him, among other things, to promote him. For example a few of the shots feature the crowds lifting Ezra above them as he sings, which holds connotations of power and success, encouraging the viewer to also see him in this way.

• In terms of costuming, the band members of Bellowhead are dressed in costumes and regular clothes, most of which show the artists as special in any way, apart from the lead singer’s white suit. This is an irregular costume for an artist, which helps to construct the star image of the lead singer. Ezra’s clothes are fashion conscious, fitting in with contemporary youth. This helps to encourage viewers to sit within the mainstream as Ezra does.

Barthes’ Narrative Codes Comparison – 

•  Enigma is not really an issue in Bellowhead’s video. The action is self-explanatory to an extent, and its home video style removes the need or want for further development or backstory. Ezra’s video however, has strong enigma codes. For example, why are the people all in this space, what is the meaning behind it, why is Ezra different to these people? These questions are constructed by the intentional lack of information and detail in the video, instead focusing on style and the vocals.

• This means that Ezra’s video’s meaning is up for interpretation, which conforms to Roland Barthes’ theory of The Death of the Author, which suggests that the meaning and backstory are true to each viewer’s interpretation of the video, rather than having a clear meaning that every viewer should view in the same way.