Name of Track: Supersoaker

Artist: Kings of Leon

Features Genre Characteristics

Observations Video shot at night or in the dark.

Examples Most of the video is shot in a dark room, which gives an eerie vibe to the video. The voice of the lead singer has a slight warble to his voice which makes it sound harsher. The lyrics slightly hint towards a sexual nature as do some of the shots in the video. They appear calm and casual throughout the video.

It has a slightly distorted sound.

It has transgressive lyrics. The members of the band have a nonchalant attitude.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals?

The lyrics talk about sentimental girls and the video shows a close up of a hand on a girls bum.

The colour scheme in the video correlates to the chorus. The lyrics in the chorus are red, white and blew it all away. The people in the video are wearing red white and blue.

Again with the lyrics about sentimental girls, I half-naked woman appears in the music video, this will appeal to the male gaze.

Relationship between music and visuals?

The music starts with just a guitar and shows a man playing it, but when the drums come into the music the shot cuts to the drummer. The music is upbeat and sounds happy. As the tempo of the music changes the cutting rate stays the same. Towards the end of the song there is a bit where we predominantly hear the

The band all look comfortable, relaxed and smiley, which fit the music which is happy. When the music gets faster during the chorus there are cuts just as often as when it is slow.

bass guitar and that is shown by the visuals as a close up as he is strumming. Later on in the song, the music speeds up for the chorus and the cutting rate quickens accordingly. From 3.10 to 3.30 the cutting rate quickens dramatically with the pace of the song. Are there close ups of the artist and star image motifs? At the start we see all the band members relatively close, which leads us to think they are all focussed upon. However, we later see the lead singer is the centre of focus in this music video, there are several close ups of him singing alone with the microphone on its own. Most of these shots are close ups of his head and face, with not many long shots which get his whole body in. The other members of the band are mostly filmed in a long shot and arent really focussed on unless they have a huge focus in the song such as when the bass guitar is the main focus in the music.

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2.31 Is there reference to the notion of looking? The male gaze is important and used a lot in this video. There are several uses such as the woman seductively sucking a straw, the man grasping a womans bum who is wearing short shorts and a woman cutting open her uniform top and pushing her chest out. There are also instances of women in the shot are the front or on their own, this draws the male eye to the music video and makes them watch.

Is the video category illustration, disjuncture or amplification? How much of each?

I would put this video in the category of illustration. This is because it is a straight forward Performance video, the band is just playing the song, we see them in the studio with drums, guitars, mic etc There are elements of performance when the git girls involved, this is done as the lyrics are about girls.