"Believe" was the second single from The Chemical Brothers 2005 album Push the Button. The single was released in early May 2005 and peaked at #18 in the charts.The song features BlocParty's Kele Okereke on vocals.I chose to analyse this music video because it demonstrates an outstanding portrayal of paranoia and mental breakdown. It has a classic realist narrative, and I feel that the video really does the eery track justice. The track is electronic and the majority of the framework is constructed of mechanical noises and sound effects, so this CGI robotic twist is effective linear to the track.The music video, directed by Dom and Nic, Dom and Nic is the working name of directors Nick Goffey and Dominic Hawley. Contains scenes filmed at the now defunct MG Rover Longbridge plant. It starts out with a man watching women in an exercise video dance on a window TV in a store, this image is a parody of Eric Prydz ‘Call On Me’ video which has been criticised as ‘soft porn, not an art form.’ This is intertextuality and reference to popular culture.
The video follows a man's transformation from a responsible worker at an automotive plant to a paranoid schizophrenic, collapsed in fits of laughter on a public street. The man notices a group of welding robots pointing at him as he walks by. The man later catches one of the machines at a nearby park, drinking from the industrial river. The robot acts suprised, as though caught in the midst of an illicit act. The man continues to encounter the robot throughout the video in various courses of his dull day, with emphasis on the representation of blue collar worker's despair in capitalist society. Around him, people seem not to notice the robots, nor acknowledge him as they chase the him around the city. Towards the end, the man runs to the roof of a parking garage, a robot climbs up the side of the building and corners him at the edge of the roof. Just as the robot is about to attack, it vanishes. The man descends to the street. Robots are coming toward him from every direction and manhole covers and streetlights emit comet-like tails colored in iridescent hues. The triangular-textured wall of a building in front of him flickers into the same iridescent shades, before falling apart in a cascade of colored tiles. Laughing maniacally, the man falls to the street as his hallucinations blot out his last rational view of the world around him. These visual effects are used to portray his vision of insanity and it shows how despite grasping onto his sanity he eventually lets it slip, which I believe is why the tiles slip and fall as a visual pun.
The video is primarily a chase scene and in no way follows the meta-narrative of The Chemical Brothers themselves. The video is constructed of amateur handy-cam footage and CGI to re-enact the robots. The video has a classic realist narrative which is usually avoided by artists in their videos. Usually because they want to market there music and themselves as a brand name. Although they are not marketing themselves as a brand an image is portrayed of The Chemical Brother DJ’s themselves on the wallpaper of the boss’s computer screen. The selling appeal to the brand is the video itself, it is entirely original and holds the repetitivity factor- meaning that people will watch it over again sub-consciously taking in the video, if they want to or not. The video contains a constant grey wash to represent the man’s mundane and dull lifestyle, the characterisation of everybody except the man is repetitive which connotes his repetitive job and life. The video is post-modern as it takes a stereotypical cultured view of London and incorporates overrunning of technology and challenges dominant ideological discourse on mental health. The track itself is quite famous but only primarily in British pop culture, The Chemical Brothers main appeal is their live DJ sets and concerts, consumption of a video like this would be on less diverse/specialist music channels or over the internet, for example www.youtube.com.
Here is a link to the video http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IkUysQASQ
The video follows a man's transformation from a responsible worker at an automotive plant to a paranoid schizophrenic, collapsed in fits of laughter on a public street. The man notices a group of welding robots pointing at him as he walks by. The man later catches one of the machines at a nearby park, drinking from the industrial river. The robot acts suprised, as though caught in the midst of an illicit act. The man continues to encounter the robot throughout the video in various courses of his dull day, with emphasis on the representation of blue collar worker's despair in capitalist society. Around him, people seem not to notice the robots, nor acknowledge him as they chase the him around the city. Towards the end, the man runs to the roof of a parking garage, a robot climbs up the side of the building and corners him at the edge of the roof. Just as the robot is about to attack, it vanishes. The man descends to the street. Robots are coming toward him from every direction and manhole covers and streetlights emit comet-like tails colored in iridescent hues. The triangular-textured wall of a building in front of him flickers into the same iridescent shades, before falling apart in a cascade of colored tiles. Laughing maniacally, the man falls to the street as his hallucinations blot out his last rational view of the world around him. These visual effects are used to portray his vision of insanity and it shows how despite grasping onto his sanity he eventually lets it slip, which I believe is why the tiles slip and fall as a visual pun.
The video is primarily a chase scene and in no way follows the meta-narrative of The Chemical Brothers themselves. The video is constructed of amateur handy-cam footage and CGI to re-enact the robots. The video has a classic realist narrative which is usually avoided by artists in their videos. Usually because they want to market there music and themselves as a brand name. Although they are not marketing themselves as a brand an image is portrayed of The Chemical Brother DJ’s themselves on the wallpaper of the boss’s computer screen. The selling appeal to the brand is the video itself, it is entirely original and holds the repetitivity factor- meaning that people will watch it over again sub-consciously taking in the video, if they want to or not. The video contains a constant grey wash to represent the man’s mundane and dull lifestyle, the characterisation of everybody except the man is repetitive which connotes his repetitive job and life. The video is post-modern as it takes a stereotypical cultured view of London and incorporates overrunning of technology and challenges dominant ideological discourse on mental health. The track itself is quite famous but only primarily in British pop culture, The Chemical Brothers main appeal is their live DJ sets and concerts, consumption of a video like this would be on less diverse/specialist music channels or over the internet, for example www.youtube.com.
Here is a link to the video http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IkUysQASQ
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