Textual Analysis of Genre : The Strokes - Reptilia

The final video I will be analysing is the music video for Reptilia by The Strokes as I thought it would be interesting to have a look at a purely narrative music video as we knew that this aspect was something we wanted in our video. The video starts with lots of focus and close ups on each of the instruments as for an indie band this is an important part of their music and being 'raw' and natural is something most indie bands pride themselves on. Another thing that I noticed in this music video is the fact that you don't actually see the main artists face or any of the rest of the bands faces for that matter until about 40 seconds into the video. This would be used to create a sense of enigma for the audience which is a key ingredient in not only indie music videos but music videos on the whole so would be something that we should look into doing when we start production on ours.

It then goes onto a really nice close up shot of just the main singer and a microphone whilst he sings along to the song. I thought this was a really effective shot to use and something that we could definitely utilise in our production as it keeps the main focus always on the singer which is something that we would want to do. After this it goes to close ups of each other band member but the shot type has changed to a more high angle shot to show this sort of heirarchy between the band. However the shots seem to be quite long in this music video compared to others which is something I don't really like as it can be quite boring for the audience to watch. As the only people in the music video are the band it also helps to create this indie vibe as they all look very individual; with their long hair and different clothing.

I also noticed in this particular video how they tend to use a lot of the same shots throughout and the video seems to be very repetitive. This is a common theme in lots of indie music videos and something that we are going to use to the best of our ability without getting boring in our music video. Overall I think this video is something that we will be able to take a lot of influence for our shots from and something that we hope will be similar to what our own music video will look like!