Throughout YYY’s video the main focus is that of the lead singer, the first shot in the video shows a theatre front with TONIGHT ONLY.... YEAH YEAH YEAH’s, this gives the impression that the video will be showing parts of a live show at this particular event. The first scene has the band in the dressing room, they get a 5 minute call and so the guitarist and drummer leave to go to stage and the lead singer then follows once she has finished her makeup and finish getting dressed, shown by a close up of her putting on a studded glove. However she gets to behind the curtain and when it opens instead of seeing the crowd that you can hear in the background the shot is actually that of an empty, wet, lit street. With no one else around her, the camera follows her out and then pans around her, revealing that there was no curtain behind her at all. This is a good use of editing as it tricks the audience, the timing of her walking through the curtain matches the point in the song that the snare kicks in and the whole ambience of the song picks up. She dances down the road and her actions match the lyrics, mimicking climbing a rope and clutching the breast of her jacket every time she mentions leather. This coincides with Andrew Goodwin’s theory as the lyrics are amplified slightly by the lyrics, and they very much have their own iconography and music style. However combines Laura Mulvey’s convention that the reason for the lead singer being the focus is that she is female to draw a larger male audience.
She then comes across the rest of the band who are set up in a backstreet with high level spot lights on all 3 members, this shot only continues for a number of seconds until the lead continues walking through the city streets. Similar shots happen a number of times. The next time inside an all night corner shop, with the lighting flickering in time with the beat of the song, this emphasises the whole song and accompanied with the overlaid video, showing varying angles in one overall view. Making for sure that the focus is on the lead singer. The next scene then shows the band in an empty shopping centre, being reckless with shopping trolleys. With a close up on the bands faces as they spin around. This is the only time other than at the beginning that a close up is used throughout the video as the majority of shots are medium shots, with effects used instead of various shot types. This video also has an inspiration of exhibitionism to the video due to the focus, although the video remains to not be sexually provocative. Instead the image of a powerful woman is portrayed, this can also be heard in her voice.
There is a lot of shallow focus used in the video, with the focus remaining on subjects in the foreground and the focus distorting what is seen behind such as neon lights and reflections off the wet floor, along with overlaid images of blotches of light, as if the recording is sometimes taken looking at a reflection like some of the other shots in the video. Combined with this the camera style appears to be hand held a lot of the time as it seems to judder as if walking along with the singer.
The bands image matches their style of music well, the lead singer wears unique cat suit style clothing, seen best when she is in the dressing room, with a latex appearance and then covered up with a leather jacket laden with studs and KO embroidered on the back. The other band members are wearing a lot less noticeable clothes and this is so attention is drawn to the lead singer yet again. They are wearing nearly all black, the drummer wearing sunglasses and the guitarist with highly styled black hair. This shows a rock influence which comes across in their music, the overdrive settings on the guitar, the hard baseline but with the electro touch to make it slightly more unique.
In comparison the Coffee and TV video has a storyline behind it whereas YYY’s video does not as such, it follows what looks like a random night out. Blur’s video uses a higher technological input. The milk cartoon is a man in a suit playing the character and is laid over the background image, which is often out of focus during close up shots of the milk carton. This makes it appear as if the milk carton is actually in the shot. The character saunters with the gentle strumming of the guitar and this gives a cheerful side to what is happening in the video. Any mood is simply portrayed by the expression on his face, and the different people he meets throughout his exploration alternates between nice and good. The motorcyclist stopping and giving him a lift compared to the woman with the streamer chasing him away. This ties in with Dyer’s theory as this is literally a character that is constructed simply for the viewers pleasure.
The distortion caused by the guitar on overdrive is effective as it is when the character is walking down a dark back alley, the angle of the camera also changes to a higher angle which makes him look even more vulnerable than he previously was. This distortion stops as soon as you see the band playing inside, and the missing singer starts singing again. This changes the mood of the scene as you realise the milk has found what he was looking for. The camera at this point is at an odd angle as it is still at the same level as the window that the milk carton was looking through, and as its a basement style studio their playing in the roof line is very low, emphasised by the low hanging lights and the camera not filming the whole of the subjects head.
This random video ties in well with the other video’s from Blur’s album, having songs with equally random video’s such as “Park Life”, “Sunday Sunday” and “The Universal” which has a level of intertextuality to the video as it portrays a likeness to the opening scene to “A Clockwork Orange” which has no relevance to the song.
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