The Great Escape by We Are Scientists by Sam

The music video starts off with the band casually walking through the park with funny/jokey dialogue about one the of the members girlfriends. Suddenly one of the band members looks at his watch and says “We got to get going”. The track starts to play as the band run off in a comic fashion, for what appears to be no reason. What follows is a series of scenes from around the park of the band running about and doing silly stunts over various benches, rocks etc. As well as crawling on the ground and doing forward rolls. During some of their stunts they imitate army men in movement of arms and mouthing orders too each other. Right towards the end of the video you find out that they were in fact playing hide and seek with a little girl, and they were running to hide from her. The song cuts so you can hear her counting, and then continues. When the song finishes the band stop running and congratulate themselves on avoiding getting caught.

The group and song is indie rock and this is displayed in the video lightly as it’s not like a usual video, there's no performance shots or really that much of a narrative to follow, mostly just the band messing around for comic effect, following the loose hide and seek narrative. It uses handycam shots to give it a 'home-made' feel. This look is sometimes used in other popular music videos, an example being OK Go's videos, particularly the one filmed in their back yard and the one filmed on the treadmills. This like their other videos, ‘Nobody Move’ for example, is aimed towards comedy. There is weak link to the lyrics; the fact the title of the song fits with what they are trying to do, and possibly a link between “I’m gonna wait right here” and hiding in a certain spot. Besides that the lyrics don’t really fit with the action on screen at all. I would say the video is hard to categorize. It could be considered slightly illustrative, as the idea of escaping from the seeker is evident in the video. It could also be seen as possibly contradicting due to the comic effect of escaping from a seeker rather than possibly a prison camp or somewhere similar, implied by the escaping and the lyrics “They’re breaking both my hands.” which could be some form of torture. Less related to the lyrics and more to the beat, but during the parts of song where the lyrics are “oh, oh, oh!” there is often 3 cuts of each band member doing the same activity but each time it cuts to each member doing that stunt or move.

There is intertextuality with classic war films, mainly ‘The Great Escape’ in which the song shares its title with. The idea from the lyrics they are escaping from somewhere sinister, as I mentioned above, as well as many shots of pastiche, for example when one band member falls down and says “Go on without me!” a cliché seen in movies and parodies. As I have mentioned also, they move about sometimes like army men, with signalling hand gestures of when to move up, taking cover behind objects, rolling and generally sneaking about. The black and white colours of the video may also be a reference to old movies, possibly old war movies, which they may be parodying.

This video shows the band as basically a group of friends up for a laugh, as they don’t even do any lip-syncing or performance shots and the whole video is made up of them running about, hiding behind trees and doing jumps and rolls. Looking at press coverage of them and their other music videos it’s clear they have a good sense of humour, with other videos and interviews done also with comic effect. For example ‘Nobody Move’, features the band performing in a room, to suddenly running out because they are being chased by a man in a bear suit.

This video isn’t really supposed to be that serious, and so can’t really be considered art, and it doesn’t challenge ideas or beliefs; but it doesn’t mean it isn’t good!

This video is really aimed at ambient viewing, there’s no real narrative to follow and so tuning in at any time of the video would yield the same effect. There are several meat shots of the members of the band, but are generally very quick and they aren’t looking into the camera, so it’s as if the camera is watching them, and the band isn’t watching the audience; a difference from a lot of music videos. In other words there is no first person mode of address.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7WJSYshvVMI&NR=1






(Appendix 1a)