Media Analysis 3 - A different view

Weezer – Memories – A music video from Jackass 3D

For my final look at what is out there I decided to look at something a little different, Weezer have two music videos, a more official music video which is done in a more narrative way with animation concept, where animation and lyrics fly on screen and the other one which I have chosen to look at, it does feature Weezer and isn’t fan made, so really it can be seen as their music video for this song as well. The music video is simply stage performance mixed with video clips from a party Weezer had with the Jackass crew, it could be viewed as a narrative performance though it wasn’t a performance, it was just clips from the film and clips filmed on a camera, it can be considered narrative because of the song and its main theme of “Memories” and wishing to go back there.

The song is roughly 3 minutes long, which is ideal to look at because anything in the 3-4 minute range is in the same time category as the song that we want to do. The song is very upbeat and cheery; this song has the same similarity to Queens of the Stone Age “No one knows! and Hollywood Undead “Bullet”, the songs are all fairly upbeat but use different lyrics and situations which make the song and change the beat and happiness of the song, while Queens of the Stone Age and Hollywood Undead sing about death and make the song upbeat the audience still get a sense of death in it, while Weezer is singing about memories which were good and which would make you want to go back there, this goes perfectly with the video because on June 20th 2011 one of the members of Jackass died, roughly half a year after the making of the movie, so the way the song is sung is meant to be upbeat and cheery with the idea that they could go back and enjoy those memories all over again makes it a nice concept and honorary because one of their friends died. This is why I have chosen to review this video because it’s a nice concept and still perfect to review due to the nature of the song, the tone and the length along with everything else. From the very first seconds of the video the audience’s attention is grabbed, the audience hear the sound of the instruments and the tone of the song and instantly like it because it’s so nice, even if you didn’t know one of their members dies you would still feel the same way about the song because of the clips it uses and just the ways it’s made and the way it all works together.

When the chorus of
Memories make me want to go back there, back there
All the memories make me want to go back there, back there
All the memories, how can we make it back there, back there
I want be there again
The audience gets clips of the whole gang singing and having a good time, which again make the audience feel good and happy, making the video and song all the more better because it makes the audience want to sing a long, especially when the lyrics are so easy to remember.

The camera is quite jittery throughout; this is because it’s handheld and adds the effect that these people are just the same as everyone else, just friends who enjoy each other’s company and memories, we can then relate to this which makes the video more understandable. The camera just tracks the group throughout the clip and gets everyone’s smile in it again adding to the effect.

The colours and lighting in this video are all quite bright and have a certain glare about them which you would get from a home video camera, this is probably due to the time that it was filmed and where it was, it was just filmed outside on a summer day where they couldn’t control lighting, again this adds to the effect that this group is normal and adds to the enjoyment and believability of the video which only adds to the enjoyment of it. There was some special effects used to change the grain and look of the video, it adds an effect which changes the look of the video to have the effect of a late 90’s early 2000’s camera detail level, the hue of it is quite orange and grainy which we could expect from a camera of this time, but this adds to the idea of “memories” because it makes it feel like it was a long time ago.

The editing in this video is different to all the other ones I have looked at because throughout the song the same upbeat happy rhythm and voice is kept, this is good because it’s the same case in Hollywood Undead’s song Bullet which we plan to do, so it gives me a chance to look at what the video we make could be like and gives me a better understanding of what we could do and how effective it could be.