Daft Punk Is Playing At My House - LCD Soundsystem
This music video applies very well to all four aspects of Carol Vernallis' theory.
Narrative
The narrative is very fragmented, by what I can gather, the narrative is that there is a very good DJ (not necessarily Daft Punk) performing for a party at somebody's house. This video is also very fragmented as it keeps changing location between the city streets and the house. Also, this video utilises a lot of interesting visual effects like stop motion and slow shutter speeds to create more distortion of narrative.
What drives the video forward is the music and the performance of the artist / host of the party, the partygoers and the 'traffic light people' act around the music (see Diegesis for more detail). The video's ending doesn't really resolve itself. All we know is that the party is now over, the 'traffic light people' take the
host outside and then it ends.
This one music video poses a lot of questions that it doesn't even begin to answer, including:
- Who are the 'traffic light people'?
- What is happening at the party?
- Why does the host keep going out into the city?
Editing
In this music video, most of the editing is done to match the music. The actual cuts between set-ups are matched to the lyrics. Although this may fall under Camera, a lot of the camera movements have been sped up to match the beat of the music. Additionally, a lot of the stop-motion with the 'traffic light people' also matches the music in the same way as the lights on the mixing desk.
Although a lot of music videos have obvious editing because of their lack of continuity, this one in paticular foregrounds the editing by using a range of visual effects such as stop-motion, speeding up footage and adding motion blur.
As mentioned before, this video breaks many of the rules of continuity:
- There are many jump cuts that break the 30 degree rule.
- Occasionally, there are cuts in the middle of lyrics.
- Extreme jumps in space are common in this video.
- Transitions are not smooth.
- Extreme shots are juxtaposed.
Camera
For this paticular aspect, Vernallis' theory is very applicable in three ways:
1. Extreme close-ups and master shots are both common in the video.
2. The camera moves in time with the music throughout the video. For example, at the beginning, the camera pans across a city, stopping on the beat.
3. The fast-paced and rough style of movement is distinctive to this video.
Diegesis
The world of the music video is revealed relatively slowly by showing various shots taken around an urban environment. Actions are very broken up by the blurry camera-work but they are also interrupted by cutting to other actions. Most movements of the people in the video are done to the music, especially those of the 'traffic light people'.
As previously mentioned, there are frequent jumps in space and time which create gaps in the audience's understanding. For example, the beginning jumps from the mixing desk inside the house to a city street at night to a set of traffic lights back to the city street to a building under construction to the traffic lights again and so on.
Some frames are emphasised by the movement stopping whilst the ones around it are blurry, e.g. when the party guests stop dancing. Throughout the video, there are repititions of the beat, lyrics and performance but more unique to this video, the colours of red, yellow and green are repeated.
As previously mentioned, there are frequent jumps in space and time which create gaps in the audience's understanding. For example, the beginning jumps from the mixing desk inside the house to a city street at night to a set of traffic lights back to the city street to a building under construction to the traffic lights again and so on.
Some frames are emphasised by the movement stopping whilst the ones around it are blurry, e.g. when the party guests stop dancing. Throughout the video, there are repititions of the beat, lyrics and performance but more unique to this video, the colours of red, yellow and green are repeated.
