Dry The River class task - reflection

For this task, we listened to a song called No Rest by Dry The River without the visuals. We then, in groups, had to identify different elements of the song including the genre, the artist and their style, the target audience, the lyrics and the pace.

We then had to come up with a potential narrative, setting, costume, camera shots and how the visuals would match the lyrics. We shared our answers with the rest of the class and then watched the actual music video.

Below is the music video:



Genre: Indie Rock
Artist (band or solo) and their style: A band with a lead singer - quite unique.
Target audience: Not people who are into pop/chart music. Probably a more mature, niche audience with a unique music taste.
Lyrics: It appeared to be an angry, yet passionate love song.
Pace: It was very slow at first, but then picks up a little bit but still not very fast. It seemed to get faster as the emotions got stronger.

Potential Narrative:
- We thought it would be more narrative based than performance. We didn't think it would be filmed at a concert if there was performance but instead in a isolated space with just the band playing. We thought there could be a bit of narrative involving a couple who are not played by any of the band members.

Potential Setting:
- A plain black or white setting with band playing in front.
- Normal everyday setting for couples video.

Potential Costume:
- Dark colours but normal clothes - nothing too abstract.
- Maybe a bit scruffy
- Main singer stand out a little bit more than the rest - brighter t-shirt?

Camera Shots:
- A lot of close-ups of lead singer
- Establishing shots of whole band

Visuals to Match Visuals:
- Jump cuts to scenes of couples - starts off happy but gradually turns bad.

Other groups idea:
- Set in a Medieval castle with lead singer as King. Wants to be with Queen but she keeps rejecting him. In the end she kills him which related to the lyrics "bleed out".

What it was actually like:
- The video only had one setting, all of the band appeared to be laying on stones and it was not clear at first who was the lead. The video seems to be linked to the four elements: fire, water, earth and wind. They look quite scruffy but are dressed in ordinary clothes. The pace of the video is relatively slow at the beginning (which matches the pace of the song) and then speeds up but there is not a lot of cuts. The video contains a kind of distorted narrative as there appears to be a story but it is hard to work out - they seem to be more in pain/desperate as the video goes on. There is little performance, apart from lip synching which increases the verisimilitude. There is a reference to the lyrics as there are some birds in the video - although it is not made particularly clear why they are present.