A Street Spirit (Fade Out) is reflected in that the spirit of a community, represented by caravans here, fades out continuously throughout the video. This is made possible by the use of black and white, which allows, through a brilliant manipulation of lighting and great editing, people to apparently disappear and reappear. The fading effect is also aided by the variations in the timing of shots. For example, early on figures move at different paces in front of the caravan; a constant pace set in the centre by Thom, and an exaggerated escape from the caravan behind, slowed to accentuate each point of the descent. Whilst this does not fade that character out, they are almost alienated from the action in the shot, and that the frames are still shots throughout, alienates the characters from the viewer all the more, reinforcing the fading theme of the video.
I particularly like the aesthetics of the video; some of the images such as the slow movement of feathers to suggest a weight to them followed by a rapid fall create interest in their peculiarity. Everything seems emphasised and studied, helped by the fact that the images are repeated and developed. An interest is then created in the narrative of the images and the video as a whole, as well as the narrative of the video against the song.
Radiohead are at times a quietly explosive band and this tension is not only heard through the lyrics, but also seen, an example here being Thom’s violence with the hammer in shattering the glass, but that the glass is then held and suspended. The video ends where it started but in reverse; that Thom eventually refuses to fade out and rises instead of falls, creates another level of tension and reflects the contradictions, confusion and the overall style of the band.
Wednesday 17 October 2007
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5 comments:
I like the fact that a lot of the actions in the video, particularly the bit with the stick waving, appear to have been just staged because they'll look good with the chroma-keyed video playing at different speed. It's an aesthetic choice with only the overarching narrative of the song to bind the moments of time-play together, instead of relying on a further invented narrative (a la 'Take on Me'), which I think elevates the video above cliche and makes it seem more playful and wonderous.
I think what I'm trying to say is that the image is the focus and is given status equal to the sound, rather than inventing a narrative and draining a rather simple and powerful effect of its impact and reducing it to cliche.
And I'm sorry about the deleted comment, that was me, I mis-spelt something!
I remember this being an Event Video when I was younger, and I think part of the reason for that was that it was so visual. It didn't directly reflect the lyrics, it didn't build its own narrative, it just did simple tricks very, very well (to see how they can go very, very wrong, look at any given high fashion advert). I wasn't partivcularly aware of Radiohead at the time, and to an extent I still classift them as The Kind of Band That Makes Slow Motion Black and White Films rather than by any genre of music, and it would be interesting to find out how far their visual style has bled over into people's perceptions of them as artists.
Well well well another AWESOME radiohead video. These boys certainly know what they're doing in terms of giving the fans what they want. Experimental, visually brilliant and there is nothing too 'arty' in the video that takes away any sort of enjoyment from the song. (at least i think this anyway)
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