Tim's Music Video Analysis

Music video of choice: Hot Chip's 'Ready for the floor'


Usually a Hot Chip music video follows its own unusual convention of filming roughly the same things several times with different band members each time and stringing them together into one cross cutting narrative. 'Ready for the floor' is no exception as like most of their music videos they give the audience a view of the starting point and a destination, this usually having no connection to the meaning of the music video. However in this case the starting point is a warehouse with the gloomy connotations needed for the melody of the song.
The structure of the video is intentionally confusing and each new scene gives the appearance of a random situation but only thing that seems to be constant in the music video is a series of tests conducted by an evil mastermind. This easily suggests the video is based on disjuncture like most HotChip music videos.
Consistently throughout the music video the editing and scenes are based on the beats of the song, this is exemplified by the very little dancing shown by the lead singer and the women dancers. This is a similar convention to the Daft Punk 'Around the world' music video where beats from the song are shown in the movement of the dancers. Given that the music is certainly odd and the band has a geeky nature, in the case, the dancing is too unusual to be replicated by avid watchers.

In terms of camera angles Hot Chip avoids disorientating the audience with unconventional angles and instead usues a series of mid angled body shots, in spite of this fast paced editing is used and forgetting continuity further confuses the audience. This all coupled together leaves the audience not knowing what to think and is very much inspired by the joker character adopted by the lead singer.

A key convention of this type of music video is that often the music fits the essence of the music video perfectly but the lyrics do not, in this case we understand the lyrics are about trying to literally 'pull' someone at a dance floor but Hot Chip avoids the obvious and boring connotations of making a video based on this activity.
This could mean some area of intertextuality was included with the popular Joker image but considering this is Hot Chip the appearance they often give and want to give is of a geeky one where they just aviod a narrative and try their best to include new technologies such as green screening and a sence of surealism.
What is extremely different in this video is the lack of performance art which is whittled down to just some minor singing, so the video relies heavily on artistic motifs to keep the audience interested.
But overall the music video makes most sence when approched with no hope of narrative and instead expecting to be wowed by visual effects which unfortunately can only be at first appreciated by experienced Hot Chip fans.

By applying Andrew Goodwin's theory this strange video starts to unravel and makes sence. Such as the theory of disjuncture where a music video has nothing to do with the meaning of the song and the theory of music videos using a consistent visual style to attract certain audiences. But the theory that applies the most is intextextuality and using popular culture which in the case the is the old Batman graphic novels and comics and the atmosphere of surrealism they produce when applied to the mise en scene of the video.