(Appendix 6)

Hifana - Akero (+cruz)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OIcG4X5g5FY

Simple style video, meats shots of the singers in black and white, and they create a world around them in colour to match the movements of their dancing and singing. Works well and is very inventive, intriguing as colour as paint spurts shoot from their body's and mouths turn into snake tongues. Does have the present of female figures bodies, maybe to sell the video, however they are wearing ridiculous masks which takes the focus from their revealing bodies and makes it comedic. The video is visually intriguing with constant movements and bright colours flashing, simple techniques like distorting the singers and multiplying their images are used to make their movements with the beat of the track.To me this seems to be disjuncture because although the artists are shown to be in the video and meat shots of the singing are included their is no narrative to the video it appears to be random images strung together.

Throughout the track a almost cartoon world is shown around them, and is morphs to different shapes and things as the take proceeds, and many of the colourful cuts are timed with the music to create a match, and scenes when the two artists surf on a wave of colour shows how this video meets the postmodern style. It constantly uses visual effect to team music with narrative, however unrelated the narrative may seem it is still link to the song. For much of the verses we only see the main singer dancing and create streams of what appear to be black paint as he moves and finishes each line of the song, the white background which is apparent through the whole track helps to emphasize the blacked out character and his dancing. When the chorus hits the video breaks out in colour and a step through the narrative is shown, and transition from the city on a bus to the beach is made, where the girls with masks follow the two singers.

The video helps show a a relaxing feel as they depart from the city and reach the beach, and the fact that the half naked girls follow them the whole way reinforces the ideological discourse that women desire rich famous men with power, and this helps to represent the band as being successful and therefore boosting their status, this then clearly works as being subsidiary media and portrays the band positively to their target audiences.. Inter textual references are also shown in the cartoon like colourful style which can be seen as reflecting some of the art style within Japan where the band originate from. The Mise-en-scene and lighting of the video make it out to be one of those summer feel-good tracks, with warms colours and a relaxed narrative.
I think this video could be seen as art, because the bright colour reflects upon paintings and the inventive movement of paint spurts and floating heads shows it to be very original, is goes a step further and is very illustrative.

Based on Andrew Goodwin's theory of the features of music video this is how Akero matches to his six ideas.

1. Within the video it can be seen that Akero by Hifana shows some simple genre characteristics, it shows a basic narrative set on a cartoon world, with regular shots of the band members singijng and dancing, although there is no specific routine for the dance, it clearly shows that the band are being presented in order to sell the song.
2. As i have already said it is obvious that music and lyrics have been linked to the visuals of the video, and many of the cuts are shown to have been made to enchance certain words within the song and this also makes it more appealing to the audience, e.g. Cuts from CU of singer to a large word 'Akero', subconsiously focuses the viewers attention to the title of the song.
3. Much the same as 2. it shows how parts of the song are enhanced and made appealing to the viewer.
4. The video shows how the record label demenads are being met, by regularly showing the band members, this can been seen from the number of CU's and MS's, these shots also show a repeated theme of the artists doing the same thing, this repeated motif shows how they are being made iconic and regonised through their work.
5. Although there is no seperate screen within this video, there is the notion of voyeuristically viewing the female body, however this sort of objectification in two ways is changed, the female characters are wearing ridiculous looking masks which could either be seen to objectify them even more or to take the audiences focus from their bodies.
6. The cartoon like feel and design of the video is clearly a reference to japanese are of where the band are from.

Seems a good video to watch, to match the sort of postmodern disjuncture style we want to do, and we can get some good ideas about postmodernism and contemporary style of video directing from this.