Carol Vernallis: Feel Good

Feel Good - Modestep

1. Narrative
The music video to 'Feel Good', by the artist Modestep, has a very clever narrative I think, that progresses through the video and feeds into the performance at the end. It is more of a concept than a narrative - we see a girl getting a call and delivering a case to another man who pays her, in the style of a drug deal. The man takes the case into his office, opens it up, and everyone begins to dance. This same situation is played out in a few different scenarios, ultimately ending up with the girl taking the case to the Modestep performance that we see cut to throughout the video.

The concept plays on the line 'the music makes me feel good', as at the end of the video, it is revealed that within the case is actually a record player, that when the music plays, makes everyone feel good and want to dance.

Their is a mix of narrative and performance, mostly narrative though, and it is told through a montage style, but we still understand the progression through the video.

2. Editing
For this song, the video is undoubtedly edited to the music. The genre of Dubstep is very bass and drum heavy, providing for a very prominent beat that is great to edit to. The editing follows the tempo of the song - as the song is slow, the narrative editing reflects this, but as the song builds up and 'drops', the video cuts a lot faster, and there is a lot more happening.
The editing doesn't attempt to create a seamless narrative, it draws attention to the cuts and the change in the music and is foregrounded. The video plays around with speed a lot, slowing down certain shots to create emphasis, to then speed back up to hit a drop.

There are extreme jumps in time and space, extreme changes in pace, juxtaposed frames, and a lot of cutting with movement.

3. Camera Movement and Framing
In terms of framing, there are a lot of close ups and extreme close ups, particularly on faces. This is to capture a lot of the action that goes in the video, and assists in progressing the narrative. Examples of this can be the extreme close up of the mask in the beginning of the video - this is the bands motif and can be seen throughout all their videos.
There is also frequent cutting back to the master shot, so that the video effectively zooms in on little details, and zooms back out to the main picture. This framing style creates for an extremely effective music video.

The camera is almost never still, it is always moving. It moves in time to the beat of the music to give the audience a sense of being there, particularly in the performance scenes (for example 1:09 - 1:18).

4. Diegesis
The diegesis, the world of the music video, is very much a rave/club, it feels like a big party. There is a lot of repetition of this - the shots and the music often go back to the performance, which looks to be taking place in a rave. We get the idea that everyone is having a great time, everyone is happy, and for the audience, this provides a lot of escapism - fulfilling some of their needs and gratifications.

Reflections
I personally think this music video is brilliant, and in a way, will be a big source of inspiration. The way it's shot captures a lot of movement and action and is exactly what a rave feels like and is where the music would be played.
I also think the artist identity is brilliant, as this is one of the few dubstep artists that promotes the band, not just the music. They do this through their great performance - it is very energetic and cuts to all of them. I particularly like how they have a live singer and drummer, I think I will take a lot of inspiration from this.