Music Video Analysis- Foals

The song chosen by the group for our music video is "Cassius", by the band Foals. They are an indie- dance punk 5 piece band, formed in early 2004 and have since 2 albums and multiple EP tracks.


The official video for the song was released on 6th April 2010, by Subpop Records, one of the labels the band is signed by. Up to date it has received over 737,400 hits on YouTube, with numerous comments from viewers about the band, the music, and the video itself. From looking through a few pages of the comments below, Foals have a varied fan base, from local areas in the UK, all the way to Europe, North and South America.

Due to the style of the song itself, there is no introduction to the video "Cassius" and launches straight into the vocals; Yannis Phillippakis (lead singer) is seen jumping into the air and dancing. The location of the video is in a whitewashed studio, giving the band room to play with colour and props to fill the set and intrigue the viewer. This leaps into a quick cut of meat dangling through the shot by thick string; this is then led to a medium shot of the band as a whole singing. There is repetition of the cuts between each other, similar to the repetition of lyrics and melody within the song.

The mise-en-scene of the band is important to the creation of the video, as it is not on a specific location it is likely that it would fail to capture and impress the audience. There are numerous props seen, inclusive of aforementioned dangling meat, and flowers, pills and toy aeroplanes. The boys interact with the props; all of them swinging the meat towards him, other members like Jack Bevan (drums) smashing flowers- perhaps as he would with a drumstick; guitarist Jimmy Smith toying with a small plastic aeroplane; bass player Walter Gervers and Edwin Congreave playing with pills. As mentioned, the band play instruments, however in this video they aren't seen to be playing them; a keyboard is seen at 1:16 as a prop, rather than being played.

The band are seen to be wearing casual clothing, everyday dress that they would likely to be wearing. Their scruffy, casual style reflects the video and music itself; the genre it is contained in.

                        

The lighting is natural; there are no strobe lights or effects used by Dave Ma (who, up to date has created and produced all of Foals' videos) as they has noted to be "self sufficient". This suggests the reasoning behind the band's decision for lower key, lower cost videos rather than including big effects.

The quick editing and fast paced music again connotes the quirkiness of the band itself, using shot- reverse- shots and quick cut aways, as it suits the rapid movement of lyrics and tempo.

The use of pull- focus within the camerawork as well shows their creative use of minimal props and set, to keep the audience interested through use of different camera movements, as well as showing equal attention to each of the band members- there is also a synchronisation within the group shots of choreographed moves. As well as this, stop motion is also used variably throughout the video to again relate back to the eccentric style, similar to quick cuts in that it keeps the camerawork different from one cut to another. The change of level also communicates this; the band is seen one minute to be stood up, the next laid on the floor, in between kneeling and jumping about.

 

Overall, the video for "Cassius" is very random, the use of props strongly confirms this as there is no real explanation given either through storyline or lyrical content. However due to the nature of this band, it fits well. Viewer comment from YouTube is mixed, however mostly commenting on Yannis' introvert dancing and the uniqueness displaying through the video.