Riptide

Riptide Vance Joy

Riptide is a good example of an illustrative music video. It has strong images to transfer the obvious motif throughout the generally upbeat song. The video is also an example of how mise-en-scene has been considered within each frame, how every aspect is used as a symbol for an idea.

1. Vance Joy - 'Riptide' Official Video

   
   

   MUSHROOMVIDEOS

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   5 YEARS AGO
   

2. Context

3. Australian singer- Vance Joy- Atlantic Records (sub label of major Warner) -- Indie/Folk Genre
4. Riptide first released in the USA and went platinum (1 million record sales). The video was directed by Dimitri Basil and Laura Gorun and has over 200 million views on YouTube.

5. Technical Codes:

6. Editing

7. Montage editing is used in an overt way- a wide range of contrasting shots juxtapose (often throughout hard jump cuts) to convey a large amount of information. Many of these cuts also have a clear link to the lyrics themselves, with visual metaphors and significance throughout. 

8. Eisenstein - Intellectual Montage

9. New ideas emerge from the collision of images. -- "I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations" -- Overt graphical representation of the lyrics is represented through the video.
10. 
    

    

    THEHUNT

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    A MONTH AGO
    
11. 
    

    

    PINIMG

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    A MONTH AGO
    
12. Here the collision of shots; MS of the girl taking off her swimming costume and the CU of the book of 'photographing girls' allows the audience to assume she's a model having been photographed in swimming costume/ or topless. This conforms the the Male Gaze theory. As a polysemic text, alternatively the lyrics of, 'I was scared of pretty girls', could be her perspective of not feeling good enough in the social pressures of looking like, as Bathes would suggest, the Myth of Beauty. 

13. Cinematic Techniques

14. Throughout the music video there are reference to cinematic techniques. Used are; establishing shots, billing blocks, letterbox.
15. Horror iconography of blood, knifes and low key lighting are used along with western imagery to give an 'indie' feel to the music video. As Steve Neale said, "Genres are dominated by reputation...they are also marked by difference."

16. Representation

17. Women are represented as victims. You can see this in the shots of the Woman becoming more bruised and hurt. However there is a shot showing women escaping from a tied up tree, without help. Therefore it could be argued that women are presented both positively and negatively.