Wednesday 24 August 2011

WS - Deconstruction 3 - Learn To Fly - Foo Fighters



Artist - Foo Fighters
Song Title - Learn To Fly
Year - 1999
Genre - Alternative Rock
Director -


Although I have already deconstructed a video by this band, I thought it would be a good idea to look at two videos by the same band at least once during the opening part of the coursework, to see if their videos differed in style, or whether bands appear to stick to a single way of music video.

This song belongs to the same genre as the other song deconstructed by this band: Alternative Rock. Despite being from the same genre however, the music videos are very different.

Throughout this video, the members of the band take on a number of different characters, with the lead vocalist performing as six different characters. Throughout there are a number of close-up shots of the different band members. There are also close-ups of Jack Black and Kyle Glass, who have guest appearances in the video through their affiliation with Dave Grohl, who has drummed for their band Tenacious D.

An important thing to know about this video is that it is a parody of the movie "Airplane!". This shows that bands look at other media's for ideas and inspiration for their videos and is something that may have an impact on our own videos.

This video seems to have a very contrasting 'mood' to that of "Best Of You". The mood of "Best of You" seems very down, miserable and depressive. Comapre that with this video where the mood is more upbeat ad happy, and you have a great contrast between the two videos, despite been from the same band. 

Another part of the video that I picked up on was that the visual starts before the music and also ends after the song has finished playing. However, there is additional music playing through these parts (music that isn't connected to the actual song). This would be an idea that should be considered when designing and making our own videos.


There are a number of different aspects to this video compared with the other video by this band that I have looked at. The main difference for me however, is that while "Best Of You" was mainly a performance based video, this video, "Learn To Fly" is in general a narrative based video. There are slight aspects of performance in this video, such as when the band are seen performing on the television screens, but the majority of the video is Narrative based.


The main things I will consider after watching this video are:
  • Having the visual extended before/after the song.
  • Having members of the band used as different characters (obviously this would be hard to do if not using a local band where you know the band members.)
  • Parodying a film/other music videos.
  • Using films or other media to inspire our own music videos.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, can be very useful to compare several of a band's vids - we'll look at a range of D.Mode vids for example. They're directed by Anton Corbijn - its important to note a vid's director/s - check my blog for an exemplar of a vid analysis.
    This is a highly pomo vid. The intertextuality is not just the Airplane! parody, but also references the famous cross-dressing of Queen's I Want to Break Free, to take one example.
    The playing around with gender (think Judith Butler) is important as you consider the AUDIENCE here: hard rock = mainly (teen/youth 15-24) male, BUT the band has older fans due to the Nirvana connection (1991 they hit big!!!), AND Grohl's sex appeal, plus humour such as this, makes the Foos accessible to a female aud more than, say Slayer or Metallica.
    Any info on the editing style, SFX, budget etc? Did you try looking up the Wiki entry?

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  2. good: you've set out what are key points for you, but it hardly leaps off the screen: change font/use sub-heading etc

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