Video Analysis of Scouting For Girls

Although our video will be a band performing, I have found a video that has both a performance based aspect and an underlying story line. The video is ‘Elvis Isn’t Dead’ by Scouting for Girls. The video begins with a close up of a suitcase and a girl packing it. We can see, in the foreground, a statue, closely resembling Elvis. Although the statue is in the foreground, it is slightly blurry. This effect is called deep focus, where the background is clearer than the foreground. This effect may suggest that the item is relevant, but not important for this particular scene.

The next shot we see is of Roy Stride (the main singer) playing the keyboard. This is important, as the beginning of the song is a keyboard.

The cuts are not long in the video, but not too fast allowing it to fit with the tempo of the music. The singing begins and the camera jumps to Roy’s face as he sings the lyrics. He constantly looks at the camera, to give the viewer’s the impression that he is singing to them. Here we see the opposite effect of Deep Focus, Shallow Focus. This is where the foreground is clear and the background is blurry, as we do not need to see it.

The video returns to the story and we see the girl take away her suitcase, leaving a bobble head statue of Elvis. Here we see a focus pull from Deep Focus to Shallow Focus. The Focus Pull is useful for directing the viewer's attention from the suitcase to the statue.

At 12 seconds into the video we see another band member (Pete Ellard) on the drums.There are three members of Scouting for Girls, however we do not see all three of them until 30 seconds into the track. This is a long time to introduce the members of the band.

Throughout the whole video, we see seven different shots of Pete Ellard playing the drums, but we only see one single shot of Greg Churchouse, the rest are of Roy, the main singer. Greg is wearing a hat and constantly looking down whenever he is in a shot with another band member. This insinuates that he may not be as an important member of the band, or perhaps that he is just shy.

We hope to include all the members of our band in our video.

The video uses Shallow Focus throughout the video as shown below where the singer is in the foreground and cannot be seen clearly and another band member is in the background in sharp focus.

A Focus Pull is seen and the opposite effect is achieved. I like this effect and hope to use it in our video.

I have also found that the camera rarely stays still when the band is performing, showing pans, tilts and zooms. This matches with the tempo of the track and ends up with a good effect.