Top 3 NME Music Videos

Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Knights of Cydonia was filmed over a period of 5 days. 3 spent in Romania, 1 day in London and 1 in Red Rock California. It was edited to be a spaghetti western with post apocalyptic influences. This particular song is a rock genre, so when looking at conventions normally affiliated with rock music it is unusual to see that the Knights of Cydonia music video is very unconventional. Within a rock video you would usually expect to see the band on a darkened stage playing their song and 'rocking out' but in this song, it is set more like a film and after doing some research on the song it actually required a huge budget. The setting of this varies from the wild west to a futuristic bar. Having very strange themes going on throughout, the meaning that Muse tried to convey through the music video is, "To teach people to stand up for themselves and make their own destiny"

A particular thing that is interesting with this music video is how the song actually resembles the music video. For example, Matt Bellamy wanted to create a vision with the song, the baseline has a galloping rhythm, resembling somebody riding a horse, and when the song is paired with the video there is a person riding a horse when the baseline is playing.


























Outkast - Hey Ya

Hey Ya was released in 2003, placing it firmly in
the golden ages of music video production. This fit the conventions of bright colours and flamboyant costume, and also story telling themes. The music video begins with a narrative, setting the scene, this shows how the music video fits the conventions of the time period it was made in. The music video was directed by Bryan Barber and he said it was heavily influenced and to an extent based on The Beatles' landmark appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. This meant that the Mise en Scene used within the music video was heavily influenced by the sixties, the props within the music video are designed like they would be in that period, for example the microphone Andre 3000 sings into is an 'old fashioned' design, also the guitar is a typical sixties shape and model. The reason this music video qualifies as one of my top 3 music videos is probably because of the entertainment value of it. As a whole, it is a very simple music video, just having the band on stage singing with a bit of extra performance on top, but what makes it one of the best is the way each member of the band is the same person and is on the screen at the same time. It is a very clever twist to add onto a simple idea and it really makes it better. There is no specific meaning conveyed through the video, which backs up the fact that it was made purely to entertain.







Pendulum - Salt in the Wounds

Salt in the Wounds was released in 2010, being one of the more recent successful music videos. The genre of music is dub step, therefore the conventions of the music video are to be very abstract and visual, in this case, the video follows that convention. Almost all of the music video is based on insects such as centipedes, cockroaches and spiders. There is no storyline as such, it only appears as though there are these robotic arms growing off of the insects. In terms of technicality there is a theme of red throughout, the background is red and even the insects seem to have a red filter over the top to make them look slightly red. Another theme the music video portrays is electricity, on multiple occasions the background turns into something that resembles a huge circuit board. This is significant because it actually matches the genre of music of dub step, which is a heavily electronic orientated genre. The
music video itself is actually more disturbing rather than entertaining, watching it makes the audience cringe, which was the intention of it which is surprising and very original.