"Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit" Video Deconstruction

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

 

 

 

The next music video I have chosen to deconstruct is "Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit". I have diverted slightly from the indie genre with this music video as Nirvana are a rock band. The reason I have chosen to deconstruct this music video is because of the sepia colours featured throughout it which i would like to use in certain moments of my music video. After searching through many music videos, this was the only one I could find which had sepia colours within it, although it is not edited to become sepia like I am planning to do in my music video. This song by Nirvana is well known all wide to a much larger audience than just the rock genre target audience making it a good music video to deconstruct.

 

 

The establishing shot for the music video is a close up of one of the audiences members shoe. The target audience would be able to recognise that this is a converse shoe and the clothing being shown in the shot is Representative of what the target audience would wear. This helps attract the target audience to the music video as it is representative of them.  The establishing shot is very dark which as the camera tracks left changes to a brightly lit shot(see below). This rise in lighting helps build up the music video as the music builds to the next section. From the beginning, the sepia colours are involved within the music video. The colours and dark lighting are similar to what you would experience at a rock music gig meaning the music video has used interextuality to appeal to more of its target audience.

 

 

 

Above is the next shot you see after the establishing shot. It is a long shot of the band with cheerleaders appearing nearer the camera. The focus is on the Cheer leaders help to appeal to both male and female audiences as they add sex appeal for the males and become aspiring figures for the females as they are pretty. It also helps to represent the bands country of origin, America where cheer leading is a lot more common. This idea is reinforced by the basketball hoop which is framed centrally at the back of the shot; basket ball is also very common in America.  The band can be seen for the first playing playing their instruments in the background of the shot.  The sepia colours continue.

 

 As the music video continues, the narrative becomes more obvious. The narrative is simple and is a audience made up of members of Nirvana's target audience watching Nirvana play in a American style school gym. The audience surround them in a thrust staging style which always makes the band seem central in most shots which helps highlight their importance.  Throughout the video there are several shots of members of the band all in equal measure to show that they all make up the band. Above is a example of one of these shots. This is a mid shot of the lead singer. He is framed centrally to highlight his importance and is shown playing his guitar to keep to generic conventions of the rock genre. The clothes he is wearing would have been Representative of the rock style when the music video was released in 1991. Today, however, they are not to representative of the target audience or the genre because of the changes in fashion. You can see in the screen shot above how orange lighting has been used to create the sepia effect for the music video. Lighting is used throughout to keep the interextuality of the music video; a rock music gig.

 

 

 

This is the only music video I could find that uses sepia colours within the video. This means by using sepia colours I may be subverting some conventions of music videos. However unlike Nirvana's music video that I deconstructed, only parts of my video are going to be in sepia; the flashbacks.  Something I have learnt by deconstructing this music video is how the quality of music videos has increased in the 20 years since the video was released.