Foals – Mountain at my GatesPerformance, 360 Music Video Analysis

Video Style & Genre

The style of this music video is performance because of its focus on the band members and the playing of instruments – this also links the video to the rock music genre as the importance of playing instruments well is focussed on by audiences of rock.

Performance based music videos tend to place a focus on the involvement of the audience, audience participation and interaction. Having a 360-degree music video exemplifies this as it forces the audience to look around and explore the band’s virtual reality scene getting them involved in the song and the video.

Concept While this is a performance music video,

there are also elements of a concept in the visuals. The mountains in the background grow extremely tall by the end of the video, effectively submerging the viewer into a feeling of claustrophobia in the virtual reality scene. Mountains are often used metaphorically to represent highly problematic issues that seem impossible to overcome. In this song, the mountain is ‘at [his] gates’ signifying that the issues are obstructing him from the minute he wakes up.

Camerawork - ‘One Shot Wonder’

The style of this music video could be referred to as a one shot wonder because the entire video consists of only one camera shot. This further forces the audience to focus on the band’s performance and the playing of instruments as a variety of shot types could distract the attention, particularly in 360-degree videos. This links the video to the rock genre and also to other performance-based music videos.

A second reason for only one shot is the 360-degree nature of the video. Too many shots make it difficult for the audience to know where to look, particularly when they have the freedom to look around for themselves, as opposed to being forced to look at certain things by a standard camera framing the shots in certain ways. Just having the one shot allows the audience to get to know the location for themselves and encourages them to look around and interact.

Mise En Scene The entire music video is shot in black and white.

This is important in helping the audience quickly identify the mood/tone of the song. In this case, the monochromatic visuals suggest a theme or concept explored in the lyrics which is of serious tone, and a colourful video would distract from this.

The use of instruments as props links this video to the rock music genre and to the performance category.

Whereas, the scene, mountainous with intrusive, high-speed flying birds, suggests that the video would also fit into the concept category.

Representation

While there are no females in the video, this music video presents us with an all male band. This arguably suggests that musical talent, and the mastery of an instrument is a male-dominated activity.

However that is most likely down to the fact that the band happens to be all male. Therefore it is difficult to say that this video strongly represents gender in any way.

More can be said about the representation of age as it represents young adults to be leading stressful lives. The lyrics and visuals suggest a life which is not easy due to the reference to the “mountain” (which could represent issues in life).

GOODWIN 7 This music video conforms to the conventions

of Goodwin. The performance element links this video to

the conventions of rock music, thus demonstrating genre characteristics.

The lyrics and visuals match due to the use of the setting that features growing mountains.

This music video features close up shots of the band/singer as this is a demand of the record label to make the band more recognisable.

No women are featured, thus this video does not conform to the notion of looking.

Goodwin 7