Emotion Photos

Paranoia

Lights Down Low

Music Video Analysis

For this music video analysis I have chosen ''Lights Down Low'' by Max Schneider which is purely narrative and tells the story of a couple through a composition of many short individual and important moments of their life together.

What visual elements are used to style the video (color, shape, line, tone, light, rhythm)? Does it stay consistent throughout or does it change? When and why does it change?

Color: When it comes to color there are three major changes throughout the video. At the first phase of the protagonists life the bedroom is filled with more colorful furniture and objects, for example the red curtains or the orange lamp after his girlfriend moves in. Eventually when they get older, the colorful furniture gets exchanged with a more brownish ones and the lamps are turned off mostly, making it looked more dimmed. Shortly after, once the wife gets sick, a filter is laid on the video creating an even darker and sallow atmosphere. Once the new owners move into the apartment the color gets reset to the beginning. Overall the color is proportional to how much time the couple has left as well as their emotional state.

Shape and line: Since the whole video is filmed from a birds eye view in the bedroom we see the outline of the shape of the furniture from above. Some of it gets moved around or is entirely being replaced at some point but most of them have either a rectangular or circular shape which happens to be authentic for a regular bedroom. The bed however is the eye catcher in the video since it remains most of the time at the same position and takes up the big central space, where most of the action takes place. Furthermore it's outline divides the picture into three equally large vertical pieces, called the rule of thirds creating an interesting eye flow.

Light: Having the same room recorded from the same perspective over a longer period of time creates an interesting lighting effect through the windows. The viewer sees whether it is night or day, can tell that it is a different time depending on lighting moving around the floor with the sunrise and sunset. Usually a production team would not want to wait that long to get these shots for all these different times and just get additional lightning outside of the windows and do it manually, but in this case the video took 6 months to produce thus I am assuming that only natural light was used. By redecorating the bedroom multiple times, the other light sources like the lamps at the windows change positions as well. Lastly the camera is positioned next to a light bulb which gets exchanged three times in the video (0:35, 1:38 and 2:35) creating a more permanent light source and through video editing we see the light of the bulb swing around like for example at 0:44. All these changes underline the pass of time and the countless amounts of unique moments.

Tone and Rhythm: The massive amounts of cut scenes from one moment to the other are timed perfectly with the music of the video. If there is a certain repetitive sound coming (from the guitar or the hands clapping for instance) the scenes jumps forward at the same time creating synchronized rhythm between music and video. This also means that when the song gets faster during the chorus the cut scenes occur more often and the scenes are sped up as well. One exception is the rewind at 3:20 where all previous scenes are shown in just a few seconds on a few long notes.

What are some of the key moments in the video? How are they photographed?

The first big key moment is at 1:38 when we see that the girlfriend is moving in by indicating it with the boxes that they bring in. Shortly afterwards the room experiences the first major redesigning. Since the video only uses one perspective those symbols like the boxes are essential to help the viewer understand what is happening in the story. Another example of a symbol used during a key sequence is at 2:30 when the husband brings in the scans of his wife's breast, clearly visible to the camera explaining why she is going to die fairly soon. Instead of looking side-wards on things like we are used to, these symbols had to be bigger to show what is going on from above, if the husband would have had just papers instead of a scan that state that she had some kind of illness, we as viewers, would have no idea what was going on.

Does the camera stay static or is there movement? Why does the camera move?

As said many times before the camera is completely static and does not change its perspective at all. However it allows us to get a glimpse of a really intimate place of a couple; the bedroom. It shows how the room changes over time and how its owners get older, which combined with the many cut scenes and the change of lighting still creates a lot of movement in the video. Overall it is also more of a quite video which justifies that movement is not crucial for it. At the end of the video it even hints that a new couple is moving in, creating a circle of events, thus one could say that the video is not about the couple but about what happens within these walls over decades.

Does the video follow the story of the song or reinterpret it in a new way?

The video does not literally show every event mentioned in the lyrics ''Under heavy skies in the rain you're dancing in your bare feet, just like we're in a movie, grab my hand and we're chasing the train'' since the video would have to break the consistency of its camera perspective only showing the room. Nevertheless, most of the lyrics fit perfectly in line, when interpreted correctly. ''Can I stop the flow of time? Can I swim in your divine? Cause I don't think I'd ever leave this place.'' these lines show how the husband wishes that the he could go back to the beginning and ironically in this video they never really leave this place during their life, it is all that we get to so of them. Last but not least the chorus fits with the progress of the video ''Oh, turn the lights turn the lights down low yeah, now I'm feeling you breathing slow, oh 'Cause, baby, we're just reckless kids. Trying to find an island in the flood.'', the light indeed gets turned lower over time and her slow breathing indicates the intimacy they have in bed as well as indicates later how he hears her slowly die in his arms. Their island in the flood is their bed, just the two of them; their paradise.

Who am I?

''But that is not necessarily a bad thing''

         At the beginning of 2016 I found myself in a situation where I realized that I was studying a major for the wrong reasons and goals that I thought were mine but essentially were someone elses. Now, one year later I am at the other side of the world, moving from Germany to South Bend, to study Integrated New Media, something that I am finally passionate about. I love how a crazy, simple idea can transform from the development of a storyboard into an amazing video that others enjoy to watch. I especially enjoy editing videos and thereby prefer movies and TV-series that are well cut, edited and end with a great cliffhanger. Talking about TV-series, I am a junkie who once I get addicted will binge watch all seasons, those include: GoT, Bones, Criminal Minds and Shameless. However, I would not imagine my ideal vacation in front of the TV but rather instead full of traveling to various places in the world. Getting to see different cultures, places, people, food and so on is what fulfills me and gives me new imaginations for future projects. Ideally, if I had no restrictions, I would love to work as a video blogger travelling through the world. Since money is a thing however, I will most likely try to move to California once I graduate and search for a job that focuses on either pre-producing or editing commercials/movies.

I want to make the most out of the opportunities that IUSB provides me with over the course of the next few years. Who knows what happens within that time, if I learned one thing from my failure last year, nothing ever works exactly the way it is planned; but that is not necessarily a bad thing.