Contrasting Music Videos

Today I have been asked to compare two contrasting music videos, I have chosen two very different ones to compare.

- The Wombats - Cheetah Tongue

- Electric Guest - Dear To Me

below are both music videos:

The Wombats - Cheetah Tongue (Official video)

Electric Guest - Dear To Me

To begin with, both videos, have an opposite feel straight off the bat. The Wombats video is an entirely experimental piece where there is one room based in the ’80s and some senior women doing a workout while doing chores, filmed in a 1x1 aspect ratio, like old music videos which means this video is also a timepiece set in the ’80s as well.

On the other hand, Electric Guest’s - Dear To Me music video is set in current time as in the video I picked up in the background of some of the shots there were modern cars. However, the did film using car’s from the ’70s, so this is confusing, possibly on purpose. In the video its clearly a combined narrative and performance piece.

So the conventions for each music video, with the Wombat’s the idea behind the video is in summery ‘the pressures behind adulthood and failing miserably’, they have captured this expression by making the video very psychedelic, the video is very colourful and looks as if it's from the ’80s. The mise – en – scene completely represents the look the Wombats were looking for. At the start there is a range of props that are on sale like a vacuum cleaner and an old telephone, the shots and background are carefully considered to look as colourful as possible, they also film in what looks to be like an old persons home from the ’80s that has been purposely made to look fake to add to the psychedelic effect, they also have the old actors wearing a range of old costumes from the 80’s that change on the characters through the video going from 80’s yoga clothes to an 80’s summer outfit.

Whereas in Electric Guest’s - Dear To Me, music video the actors and band are all dressed in clean looking clothes (the video has also been shot in monochrome which adds to the effect). As well as this being set in the 70’s the mise – en – scene is very good, however, in one view, there is a modern car from around 2010 which I picked up, something I couldn’t pick up from the Wombats video where everything that would be seen in the shot was from the ’90s. Other than this, the Datsun pickup truck was perfectly fitting for the song which is about being lost then found. However, the video itself is confusing as there are scenes of the main vocalist singing alone in his car and others where other people surround him. Although the thought maybe the reason he is in his Datsun from the ’70s and everyone else driving on the road in modern cars, is that he does feel lost and doesn’t fit in, this would make more sense, and this may have been what Electric Guest was going for. So other than this the rest of the props and the set where the band were performing were all from the ’70s, the shot was also immaculate with no mess in the background of any of the shots, they were simple, smooth and effective. As well as this, outfits for the era fitted in shots including other people who matched the feel, though I do think some other couples that later in the video were together were wearing newer clothes, although this could have been to symbolise that the main vocalist was indeed left behind. In this video, there was also only three locations on the beach, in the Datsun and the studio, with big white and grey walls, which gave a clean and simplistic look to the shots.

During both songs there was a varying degree of lyric interpretation, this was where the video moves with the beat, this was I would say more present with the Wombats song where there were zooms with the music, pans and cuts, for example when the lyric “Don't shut your eyes till we fade to black” there is a close up of a lady’s eyes wide open, as well as this there were some symbolic meanings behind this song as well as there was throughout the video. There were three pink windows in the background that looked wrong, and this worked with the psychedelic effect. As a whole for me, the song with the better music video was the Wombat’s as it added more and something completely contrasting to the beat of the song the opposite visuals. I remember when I first watched the video I felt like what was I watching was grabbing my attention; this was done by clever editing to the beat, bright colours and a weird concept. Whereas with the video from Electric Guest they did use lip syncing throughout the video, and some cuts were edited to the flow of the song not necessarily to the exact beat, there was also some shots of the Datsun throughout the whole video in studio shots and the road shots, which did add a deeper symbolic meaning to the song but not as sharp as the feeling created by the Wombats. Just one more thing there was dance choreography throughout both of the videos. However, where Electric Guest’s there were 5 or 6 scenes of dance, in the Wombats almost all the scenes with people had some dance going on. One last thing was that in the Wombats video the lyrics were in bright yellow throughout the whole video guiding the watcher, whereas in Electric Guest’s video the only way to find the lyrics are on Genius.com, So for me from this I prefer the video from the wombats as it is an entirely different take on a video both being experimental and parody-like.

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