I have chosen to analyse Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve as my second video analysis because I wanted to analyse a song from the same genre as my chosen song. Both Bittersweet Symphony and Secrets are in the alternative rock genre and both make use of a cello to create unique and interesting sounds.
Bittersweet Symphony is the 1st single on The Verve's third album, Urban Hymns and it reached number 2 on the UK Singles chart. The song is 4.33 minutes long and is of the alternative rock genre similarly to One Republic. The song also in a similar way makes use of violins to give it a unique sound. These qualities will make it a good analysis to conduct for research regarding my chosen song.
The video is in a pseudo-performance style as the lead singer is shown singing as he walks along a street but the rest of the band is not shown.
The video begins with a camera panning to follow the lead singer (Richard Ashcroft) as he walks onto a busy street.
The unique sound of the violins fade in on the 3rd second eventually drowning out the ambient street sounds that could be heard before. This highlights how the character is thinking and how he becomes almost oblivious to the world around him as the song continues.
He stops and turns to face the camera as it pans up to show his face. The camera moves slowly backwards as he pauses and looks towards it as if deep in thought.
Eventually, Ashcroft begins to move forwards, following the camera. The rest of the song continues as he walks along the street throughout which, he is shown to be completely uncaring and almost oblivious to his surroundings.
Almost immediately as he crosses a road where he doesn't look, he is almost run over but he shows no reaction. He continues to walk down the street and doesn't move from his path regardless of who or what is in his way. The lyrics were clearly used directly when the video was being created, the third line of the first verse is ''I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down''. This is represented by the road he walks down and along with ''it's a bittersweet symphony, this life'' clearly set the theme for the whole video in the eyes of the director and the video reflects that in the singer's nature and actions.
We first planned that I would be involved with the editing of the music video. To this end I began to learn how to use Final Cut Pro. I used a combination of video tutorials and a book called 'Final Cut Express, Video Editing for the Digital Enthusiast' to learn some basic video editing techniques that would be necessary for the completion of the storyboard and eventually, the video itself. I learned how to:
