deconstruction vampire weekend a punk

A punk was Vampire weekends debut video so all focus has to be on them. The way in which they did this was by making their video in a white room although its not completely white the majority of it is, therefore by them wearing different coloured clothes it makes them stand out compared to the white wall and there is nothing else to distract the audience from looking/focusing on anything else. The grey flooring adds to the verisimilitude as a complete white room would not come across as a real place you would perform whereas just white walls and a grey flooring does. Also because the majority of the filming is long shots it means that the whole room would have to be white and a complete white screen may be too much.

The types of shots used are a majority of long shots and medium close ups. This is so that when long shots are up the focus is on the band altogether and when its on the medium close ups its to emphasise the focus on a particular part of the band, for example the singer/guitarist, medium close up with him in the foreground and the rest of the band in the background to show that they are still included and that they are a band and not so all the focus is on one particular band member.

The editing is very clever as it is all jump cuts, however you wouldn’t notice this as the space between the cuts aren’t very long so it sometimes seems seamless, when in actual fact its not. The camera is static throughout and its what is within the frame that changes and moves. The reason for this could be to make it different and interesting as not many other videos do this throughout the whole video and therefore makes this one stand out amongst the rest.

The story within the video is like as if time is passing, like a time lapse, the costume changes and setting changes support this. In the beginning it starts off with the band just playing then they change into brighter clothes and then change into winter clothes and it appears as though its snowing and the lighting is lower to give the impression its darker and colder. This supports the idea that its like changing seasons. Another part of the video would be summer with little hand made fishes on the screen and a blue filter to give the idea of water. Although its not real fishes they want the audience to see that they aren’t real and it’s the same with the costume change, they do it within the frame quickly. So the transitions are obvious and everything that happens appears within the screen.