Plan B's music video, 'The Recluse' is currently the most recent music video in a series of videos by Plan B detailing the demise of a fictional character portrayed by Plan B called Strickland Banks, and is also the same character from Plan B's upcoming movie 'The Defamation of Strickland Banks'. Plan B's recent massive rise to fame has been achieved to due to his drastic change in lyrical style & song structure, and Radio One's frequent daytime playing of his singles.
The music video itself starts with an over the shoulder shot of Strickland walking through the inside of a prison and the music kicks in when he tries to get past some stereotypical prison thugs and dies down again after the encounter. The music stops for about 15 seconds, and the only audio is a crowd chanting 'Strickland' alongside Strickland himself in an isolated prison cell. This then cuts to him walking in front of presumably the same crowd which then cheers as he is seen.
The music video kick starts again after this interlude and goes to a master shot of Plan B and his band performing the song. The next 2 minutes of the video cut between different close-ups of the band and Plan B & master shots of them both, and the music video's main narrative of Strickland sitting in a room on his own, watching the TV detailing news reports of him, relating to the songs lyrics of 'Yeah they call me the recluse, 'cos I don't go outside for nothing' . There are also brief cuts of him alone in his isolated prison cell, leading the narrative to have two accounts seclusion.
The narrative progresses throughout this 2 minutes of him going into his garden and eventually going back inside after being aggravated by an overhead helicopter, and then to a house party, which is presumably before he locked himself away from the world. At this pool party he threatens all the guests with a pistol, which inevitably leads to them all frantically leaving. At this point in the video the song style changes to Plan B's signature rapping, highlighting the sudden change in Strickland's mood.
The whole mise-en-scene of the video works very effectively, making the viewer genuinely feel for Strickland and his situation - being isolated from the world in his mansion. This can lead to the famous saying 'Money can't buy happiness' which certainly applies to Strickland.
This video relates to our groups idea's for our music video as Plan B's genre is ultimately very similar to our chosen bands, mainly due to the slower tempo chorus's and rapped verses at a much higher tempo. This allows me to see how a song with this structure is portrayed effectively in a video.
The music video itself is relevant as it cuts between a narrative and the band performing, something we may consider doing for our video. The syncing is also perfect, and again lets us see how to sync rapped segments effectively to the music.
No comments:
Post a Comment