The Hives‘Main Offender’

Editing

The opening section to the video starts off with lots of special effects used to create an image of newspapers being printed off, with the newspapers showing stories about The Hives. This use of special effects carries on throughout the video and the videos carries on with this idea of newspapers/advertisment as the image often shows cutaways to videos of the band performing embedded into rectangle shapes (often billboards) whilst the normal, created scenery carries on. (As shown in the screenshot bottom right.)

Editing continued• The way in which the video is edited creates a feeling as if it is purposely

created with a quite static feel, as the people shown in the video often appear very rigid, for example at 1.02 there is a shot of a person on a skateboard and his leg does not bend when he is pushing, it just slowly moves down then back up giving a ‘stick man’ feel due to being filmed on a green screen then edited in and so this limits the realism of the people’s movements (however this can be improved with more time/better equipment.) But, I think it was done on purpose to create this sense of limited movement which contrasts with the idea we as an audience get in our heads when we think of the kinds of movements people would make whilst listening to The Hives, or when the Hives are performing.

• The video also has a faint cartoon filter placed over the film, which again helps to emphasise this feeling as if the video has purposely not been produced to try and replicate ‘real life.’

• The video also contains numerous captions throughout to help the audience follow the story which is being shown in the video, which I think is a good idea as it would be hard to follow this story without the captions because the video is unusual to what we would normally relate to a video from The Hives as their other videos mostly contain the band performing in a blank room, with cutaways showing a close up of band member’s faces. However, this still happens in this video for ‘Main Offender’ but it is not the main attraction to the video, like it is in others, but it is still a running theme that The Hives incorporate into their work.

Mise en sceneAgain, the members of The Hives are portrayed throughout this video dressed in formal wear; suits, black jackets, ties, formal white trousers/shoes. Which is very much a common theme throughout their videos/products in general now, which I find interesting as this video is very different to other from songs such as ‘Wait a minute’ and ‘Hate to say I told you so’ and so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were dressed differently due to this fact, but they stayed the same and kept a running theme throughout their products.Scenery wise, lots of special effects/editing In general has been used to create a town/city environment, which is where everything in the video happens. The video shows the band members travelling through this town or city to finally meet at a mansion at the end of the video, which is the main story to the video as it begins with the band members receiving a letter saying they have a press conference at 2pm, and so then there a multiple shots showing the band members making their way there, as the lyrics say ‘I’m on my way.’ The band then finally arrive at the press conference which is the ending to the video.

(Arriving at the press conference)