Catfish And The Bottlemen - 7 Analysis

This music video is a performance type. The video features the band itself, taking us on a journey backstage showing us what the band do best. The song is about a relationship, however one feels he is unable to love because he always on the road touring. The video compliments the lyrics reinforcing Giddens idea about the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics.

Some of the codes and conventions of indie alternative music videos is that they are mainly shot in black and white, feature the bands themselves, have a low cost budget feel to them, and this idea where ‘it’s all about the music.’ We also found that a lot of music videos have some sort of dialogue at the start, which this video includes.

The opening of this video starts with a short amount of dialogue from this we are introduced to the bands attitude, the fact one band member is still in bed connotes that they are lazy. The video is shot in black and white but we assume that the member is wearing a black shirt, reinforcing the stereotypes of mise en scene.  This is filmed with a handheld camera creating the low budget feel to the video. We don’t see the faces of the members in this shot, this again tells us that it’s not all about what they look like. The shot is a big close up this tells us that they are lads and have this ‘Laddish’ behaviour to one another where they live to wind each other up. The use of the word ‘fuck’ reinforces the ‘bad boy attitude.’ The member in bed is also very moody again really reinforcing that stereotype of the genre.

The music comes in through the use of a Crescendo, once the music reaches its loudest point the scene changes to a stationary medium close up of the band member. This gives the impression that the band is lazy as they have just left the camera rolling on the side. We see them lighting up cigarettes which again reinforces the bad boy attitude but also makes the band relatable as they are doing things that ‘normal’ people do. In this short scene a time-lapse has been used to speed things up. In this we see some of the band

members chilling out in what looks like someone’s house linking back to the codes and conventions of the genre that they have a cheap budget to make their music video. The use of the time-lapse could be to represent the band to be quite slow and lazy therefore the effect of the time-lapse creates this chaotic atmosphere.

    A tracking/ zoom in is used to spot one of the band members asleep on a deckchair holding his guitar, he is wearing the stereotypical black skinny jeans and a check shirt. These items both have connotations to being quite scruffy compared to someone in a suit. His body language in this frame is very relaxed. The member is cuddling his guitar like he is in love with it. The guitar takes up most of the room on the chair as if to say the member is putting the guitar first rather than himself. This suggests that the band on a whole put the music first and themselves second.

A straight cut, cuts between scenes still using this handheld camera and tracking motion following the band. In this scene we actually get to see some of the faces behind the music. This is really important because when big close ups are used to show their face you can sense the awkwardness as they aren’t a band that want to be in the lime light and doesn’t know what to do when they are.  As the tracking movement continues, we see another band member in the similar clothes sitting down and strumming his guitar. This really indicates that this genre of music where they really take pride in their music and are always playing.

This video is includes majority of the codes and conventions make an indie/alternative music video needs. The lyrics of the songs does have a close relationship to the visuals of the music video, however it isn’t very obvious and you have to really understand the band and the music in order to make the connections between the two.