Helena Beat - Video Analysis

Genre Characteristics: The artists (Foster the People) who wrote the song in my opinion are an indie pop band. Their music is slightly different to what you would usually hear along ,especially, with his voice, which is much more high pitched than other bands of the same type of genre. This is highlighted in the oddness and seeming randomness of the video. The video seems to be about nothing in particular with adults been captured and then turned into children, by children. The song's tempo is similar to that of which you would expect from the indie pop genre and is much more different than, you coud say, The Beastie Boys video tempo.

Relationship between visulas and lyrics: People have taken many different views as to what the song means with ideas such as it being about the time when you come back from a party and think 'now what?'. Really in my opinion I beleive the song is about how hard life is and how you have to get back up from it. This matches up to the visuals of the video as it shows the lead singer 'Mark Foster' recovering from what seems like a post-apocalyptic world, so obviosuly the connotation of him getting up after 'being knocked down' are there.

Relationship between music and visuals: At the very beginning of the video  many images and clips of violence and war are shown at a fast pace, these are in time with the drum beats that start of the song. Also throughout the song the shots change in time with roughly every other beat in the song. Obviously it's a link that the lead singer of the band is the main character in this video and he is singing along to the lyrics for a portion of this song. At one point when the song skips from the verse to the chorus there is a build up in the volume of the song which then erutps into a louder sound but is accompanied visually with the sight of a piano crashing down and smashing into the ground. When the drum kit is being beaten by the children with baseball bats one opf the kids is hitting the bass drum perfectly in time with the song. The bridge part of the song is where everything slows down, and then it goes back to normal when returning to the chorus. During this chorus the childen are also singing along to the song.

Star Power: The star power in this song is just that the artists themselves are in the song, the band themselves don't have anything too definitive about them compared to Bono and his glasses for instance, or Michael Jackson and the moonwalk so there isn't too much 'star power' especially as music goes Foster the People are a fairly new band, which although have their own style they don't have a definitive thing which is 'theirs'.

Notions Of Looking: In the video apart from a few shots which I will explain, there is very little of the notion of looking, the shots which are like this take place earlier on in the song before Mark Foster is captured, and they are showing us being the children that capture him, looking through the desert grass spying on him, apart from this there is very little for the notion of looking, but there is also a scene in the dark in which Mark Foster is being dragged back and beaten by the kids in the dark and the footage was taken with non-steadycam footage so it looks like you're actually part of the group of kids that are abusing him.

Intertextual References: There are several references to other forms of media such as, the Fallout series and Mad Max are respectively games and movie both set in a post apocalyptic world which is obviosuly set in this world, Lord of the Flies is based around children being in charge of themselves and the madness which stretches from this, and obviosuly a large part of this is the children in the video being charge and later the adults being turned into children. Escape from New York also follows the post-apocalyptic theme.