Analysis of Band

Scouting for Girls; Heartbeat

Scouting for girls is an indie pop group. The video for this song is based on a typical ‘high school dance’. There are lots of girls and boys on the dance floor and then the Scouting for Girls band are on the stage performing and singing the song. I think that this is a performance, narrative and also art. I think it is a performance video as it shows the band on stage singing, it shows the piano and the drums also. I think it is a narrative video because it shows boys walking to girls being in love. I think it is an art video because it has little animations in it, for example when a boy meets a girl there’s a little red love heart that appears on the boys chest.

The editing in this is very quick paced. It moves from show to shot very quickly. At points in the video it pauses. Like when a boy meets a girl and the animated heart beats while the video is paused. The shots cut from a performance part of the video quickly to a narrative part of the video, and then quickly back to the performance part of the video.

The lighting is very different compared to the two other videos I have analysed. The first concept of the lighting I noticed was that it was quite dark, and I think this was to show the idea of being at a disco with the dark lighting and then bright ones to make a contrast. However the part where the camera focused on the stage was quite light so we could see the shots of the singer. The last concept I noticed about the lighting was there were red glimpses, which almost seemed smoky like. I think this is to show the idea of love.

The most commonly used camera shot is the mid shot, which kept constantly going back to showing the main characters face. I think this is also, like the other two video’s I have analysed, for the female gaze and attention. The camera shot include wide shots which show the whole ‘high school disco’, at a glance.