Hannah's Music Video Analysis

Tommy Reilly - "Take Me Away For The Night"


Key Generic Conventions:

Tommy Reilly's video gives us an example of off beat editing, which enables the video to capture realistic movements, for example, the point of view shots place you in the position of Reilly himself. The action of the video is fast paced, suiting the songs fast tempo, which is further reflected in the mise en scene, which creates childish elements. The rocket could symbolise the childhood dream of escaping from reality and entering one's imagination, something the video definitely highlights and is again reflected in the title of the track, 'take me away for the night'. The title mirrors the narrative of the children's book, 'Where The Wild Things Are'. Reilly's aviator based costume, also highlights the role of his character. The video can easily be described as quirky and fun, which reflects Reilly's other work, and previous singles. The lyrics establish a 'happy' feeling which is reflected mainly by the brightly coloured rocket. However, whilst the video conveys a joyful feeling, there is no illustrative relationship between the visuals and the lyrics.



No tracking dollies were used in the music video, in stead all the shots where Reilly is facing the camera directly, were shot by a video camera that was attached to a wheel borrow, which Reilly would sit in. This would allow the close up shots and still give the impression of the 'bumpy ride'. However, in order to give the illusion of fast movement, digital effects were used to speed the camera shots up.



One key convention the music video does follow, possibly the most important in today's pop music videos, is lip syncing. Every time the camera uses a close up shot, Reilly lip syncs. Some shots are also shot in stop motion (for example when the rocket crosses the stream in the field).



Elements of video would be hard to recreate, for instance when Reilly jumps into the rocket at the beginning. However, the use of stop motion and live action along side one another appears to work really effectively within this music video, a factor we may consider when developing ideas for our coursework.