I have decided to analyse the song 'Kids' by MGMT as it is one of my favourite songs and I believe the music video is interesting and will be useful to look at in detail.
The video starts off with a blank, black screen as ‘cheering’ sound is played for 1 second. The first shot shows a male and female, both in sports clothing. One is white and the other black, this suggests racial equality in the videos ideology. They dance in tune with the music for 10 seconds. The shot is a medium shot and the camera style is fuzzy which suggests a more handheld effect. The shot cuts to a weatherman standing in front of a ‘7 day weather forecast’ screen. He is also dancing in a comical fashion. This shot is also a medium shot which allows the viewer to see part of the mans surroundings, his body and facial features, however not in full detail. The scene then cuts to a woman’s face. The shot is a close up of her face as she looks towards the camera, turns and dances away. The camera style is a black and white effect which denotates less vibrancy and colour and connotates old-fashioned, television-style effect. The scene shifts again at 0:20 to briefly show a crowd of black males laughing and waving at the camera, supporting the feeling that the viewer is watching television. Then we see a domestic setting environment and a man with two children, presumably his own, standing in front of a television dancing. The shot is a medium shot again, to provide consistency with the other clips and suggesting the shots are all part of the same compilation of shots. A medium shot then shows a man enter the house by opening a door. We, as a viewer, are led to assume that it is the same domestic house in which the children and man were dancing in. At 0:22 the scene suddenly shifts to show a black background, with multi-coloured lights and a woman stood in the foreground. She is wearing white and black face-paint and smiling. The shot is a close-up and only shows her face. A male character is introduced in front of the same style of background; he is also face-painted. They are both dancing, however we only see this through their faces, shoulder and hand movements as only close-up shots are used when filming the face-painted dancers. At 0:35 seconds the scene changes again, showing women dancing. There are three women in the next shot, they move their hips in synchronisation and are similar to each other in appearance. After three seconds of footage the shot reverts back to the face-painted ‘kids’. The scene then changes back briefly to show a group of females dancing. They are wearing sports clothing and the camera shot is a medium shot. This relates back to the original compilation of clips and suggests it is in the same group, e.g. not the central theme of the video. When showing the female dancers a panning shot is used to include all dancers. The camera style also briefly changes to black and white, supporting the idea that the separate scenes are like television clips. Once again, the scene changes back to the face-painted male who is singing the song ‘kids’. Similarly, the face-painted female also sings in synchronisation with the song. When the lyrics say ‘We like to watch you laughing’ the face-painted woman smiles. The lyrics then say ‘You pick the insects off plants, no time to think of consequences.’ The male character shakes his head with a sad expression. The males facial expressions are sad throughout the video while the females remains bouncy, happy and childlike. The characters link well with the song as the song describes, depending on interpretation, children feeling alone and sad.
After researching the video I found out that the facepainted people are from Los Angeles and were friends with the video producer and filmed it as a spur of the moment project. They did not expect it to reach as much success as it did. The girl in the video is called Abby and she said 'We are celebrating a year since Jon posted the video! We never would have thought it would reach over 8 million hits, I never thought it would even reach the Internet!'
Below is a link to the video and an image from the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEOZCcaXzE
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