All Saints: Black Coffee

All Saints were one of the most successful girl bands of the 90's who achieved a total of 5 number 1's. I chose this music video to analyse because I really like the overall feel it creates, its very unusual for a girl band to have a cold and moody video, but this isn't unusual for All Saints as we can see in their other video 'Pure Shores'. It could be suggested that this more mysterious way of presenting themselves is in contrast to the more bubbly and in-your-face rivals at the time - The Spice Girls.

The video was set inside a luxury city apartment and on the roof top of the apartment at night. Even inside the lighting is still very dark, usually only a small part of what we see on screen is visible - with the rest being blacked out. Any lighting that we do see, applying mainly to when outside, has quite an obvious blue tint - the colour blue is usually associated with coldness, so this has been done deliberately to set that sort of tone. I also believe the overall tone to this video is classy as no harsh colours have been used, this is enhanced by the surroundings and the set of the video.

The narrative of the video is based around a variety of young couples in heat of an argument, in each different case we see one member of the band singing and sensually dancing in the background - although the arguing couple cant see them and 'The saint' isn't looking at the couple. In each scenario the argument reaches a peak and something ends up getting smashed or thrown, this is were we see interesting visual effects and clever editing - the scene freezes, leaving something half way through the air or half smashed, something similar to the special effects to 'bullet time' in 'The Matrix'. Once the scene has frozen the camera then zooms in and often pans slowly round the situation, the meaning behind this effect is to probably get across the message that you should stop and think to assess the situation before taking it too far. The lyrics 'Freeze the moment' during this time also go hand in hand with the visuals. I think this effect works beautifully in the music video, its not often something you see so not only is it unique but it adds quality to the video and promotes that sort of image for the band. The setting of the rooftop looking over the city also works with the 'expensive' feel of the video, having band members on the roof can reflect the idea that the All Saint girls are quite big stars and can 'over rule' cities - however, the clothing on the girls differ with this idea, being very casually dressed could show they are also down to earth. The cinematography used develops this idea, usually when you have a person standing on a roof top, the camera will most likely be tilting up at them to add to that feel of being dominated, however, all camera angles are eye-level with the band to create that feeling of indifference.

Camera movements are very smooth throughout the video which suits the pace and feel of the song, there isn't much variation of camera angels however, usually just close ups, establishing shots or long shots take up the majority of the video - perhaps just so it feels more calm and slow. The same concept applies to the editing which is fairly long takes of a montage of couples arguing and the group singing. At the end of the video, clever editing techniques make the visuals fit in with the music in the foreground - when a distinctive beat is made, the All Saint girls freeze one by one. Although quite a lot of music videos use this technique, this one makes it really obvious, I think this effect works really nicely as it proves it has been edited professionally and emphasises not only the music but whats going on visually.

When regarding the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals you can quite clearly see contradiction. With the lyrics in the back ground saying 'I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here' the couple on screen couldn't look more like they want to get away from each other! I think the use of contradiction in a music video is really unique and in some ways makes you pay attention to the lyrics and visuals more - whereas in a music video that involves everything that's being sung about can be obvious and in some cases dull. However, there are some small links between the lyrics and visuals - when we hear 'freeze the moment', everything freezes (apart from the 'Saint' in the back ground) when only having this small relationship between the lyrics and visuals, it really emphasises the point. 

Although we see a mixture of performance, narrative and concept its quite obvious the narrative and the concept highly out weigh the performance. Narrative includes the different couples arguing in their apartments, however we don't know the story behind their argument or how it ends. Concept is mainly put across by a mixture of the special effects (freezing and zooming), contradiction and use of lighting and tones- it could be suggested that using all of these together makes the point that, as I've mentioned before, you should assess the situation by almost freezing it and/or calming down before doing anything too drastic. The cool tones used adds to this idea of calming down.

 However, when we assess the performance we never actually see a shot of All Saints together, singing as a band. They are performing by singing and dancing individually and its all very subtle which does suit the feel of the song, but there is no sense of 'togetherness' projected by the band which could be quite damaging for their promotion. All Saints were in fact not on talking terms during the production of this video, hence why they are not together - but it shouldn't be the message they want to get across.

Even though most people regard the intended audience of 90's girl bands are young girls - I feel the overall tone and concept to this video is more likely to appeal to an older audience, considering the actors in the narratives are adults and are in adult situations that people can relate to.