Arctic Monkeys // The Culture Show

Clip:

Arctic Monkeys Interview        

Presenter:

Lauren Laverne   

Link: http://bbc.in/b5kMg2

                                                              By: Sebb 

Mise en Scene:

Right from the word go a lot of pretty amateur effects are used to create a slightly more unique introduction than the rest. It starts with a couple of shots from an urban terraced housing street blurring out into one another. It isn't synced very well to the music as it just shows random clips with no specific tempo to the sound track. They use fast zooms and blue flashes as well as some defocusing and Gaussian blurs. Then a four piece window shows clips on the panes using motion tracking probably from AAE.

 The majority of the colour correction for the first 27 seconds is a mixture of light and dark blues. After the introduction, we see the presenter Lauren Laverne coming down a narrow back street on her way to see "The Monkeys." Here she talks about their old and new albums as well as notifying people of their awards and accolades. For another 30 seconds, when she enters their studio, things get a little weird. Random red eyes pop up on the screen blinking rapidly as well as a deep blood red colour reflected on the silhouette of the lead singer, Alex Turner. She interviews the band for a good minute before cutting to a clip of the Queens of the Stone Age. The interview is sat out with a vivid red background placing the two interviewees in a sort of deep perspective which just adds a new element to the scene. 

Sound:

The sound is diegetic as the people in the film can hear the interviewer talking to them. If there was an interview where the sound was non-diegetic, which means sound outside the world e.g. music, it would be pretty useless and a waste of time.

Lighting:

The lights are mostly high key in the interview but are quite low key in the opening shot to create a spookier more surreal mood. I think they used a 3 light setup in the interview as there is a key light, fill light and a back light. Also you can tell that there are lights to the left of the band members and to the right and finally one above them. I could tell this by the shadows being casted on to Alex’s forehead and by the way the cheek eclipsed when they move their head slightly.

Camera work:

The composition consisted of a variety of long shots, medium shots and close ups. Especially in the intro, skipping from long shot to close up with a quick zoom made the scene jump out at you a little more than just simply tracking or panning the camera from left to right. Not many angles were shot on Canteo as well as not shooting high or low angles. They were just shot looking directly at the persons face. If the angle was pointing up at the interviewer then it would create a status of more importance and an interview is not a suitable scenario to place someone in a “more importance” situation.  

Editing:

The editing at the beginning as I said was pretty amateur, there was not really anything to make it look really different and stand out yet if that had been done then the attention from the band would of been taken away. The editing was focused on the ethos of the band which I guess would be more chaos and craziness other than beauty and art. This shows as the cutting rate is pretty quick to begin with but only features flash, fade and cut transitions. Anything else would have been too cheesy such as a bar or checkerboard transition. Later on in the clip a transition called a “film burn” or a “light leak” is used to create a more clean quick and professional look from going from clip A to B. These are usually red and orange colours but to fit in with the blue colour correction they changed the hue colours to a more bluey purple.

Overall this clip was good to get an insight into the bands thoughts and feelings on their new album being released “Humbug” as well as their influences in the music world. The 10 minute video finishes with one of my favourite songs “Crying Lighting” which wraps up the video with a quick cut and a slight sound fade.