Monday, 19 July 2010

Analysis of Afrika Shox by Leftfield.




Afrika Shox by Leftfield.

The choice of images that have been used in this video give the impression that the genre of the music is that of RnB and Hip-hop. It also follows the genre of street dance. The video leads us to believe this because of the dull colour palette, the location being in a big city, the characters and the subject matter. The fast pace editing also leads us to believe this, because it matches the beat of the music. The video backs up Goodwins theory of a link between the lyrics and the visuals within the video. The Afrika shox video represents this theory by; they sing "the rhythm of afrika" which represents the title of the video and the rhythm in th song and also the the way in which the visuals are shown at the same sort of pace as the song, this reiterates the lyrics. The title of the song automatically represents nationality and race, however the artists name `Leftfield` represents the left and right sides within society and government. The use of a big city as the location for a song entitled `Afrika shox`, shows the contrast between a large urban city and africa, it also shows the contrast between those who live in the different locations.

The lighting in the video is ambient as it is located outside, however within some of these outdoors scenes, the taxis have their headlights on which creates a spotlight effect, it also defers the audience away from the various things that are going on around them. Non ambient lighting is used several times during the video in the forms of signs and the lighting in a car park. I think the purpose of the video is to show the african culture and the way it differs from the british,american culture. Special effects and CGI`s have been used in this video, they have been used in order to show the male characters limbs falling off.

The video does not include any performance from the band/solo artist themselves, however it follows a narrative based structure, where it tells the story of the male character in a big city, who is losing his limbs. The narrative structure is linear.