Intertextual references of the ska genre in our music video

Less Than Jake are an american ska punk band and formed in 1992. The have released 8 full length albums thus far. They reached number 37 on the UK charts with 'Brightest bulb has burnt out' and recently performed at the Reading and Leeds festival over the summer. They are currently signed to sleep it off records. This video is from their album GNVLA:Digipack. It shows a modern ska video with ideas and techniques we want to incorporate into our video for Smaller Than You with 'Who Knew'

The opening is of an urban location. For our video we are planning on filming in Norwich City Centre. The city resembles an up beat atmosphere which is relevant to the genre of ska therefore this long shot helps to establish location as well as genre within our video due to the two tone movement which occured within coventry in the 1970's. Coventry is located 2 hours outside of London as is where Jerry Dammers launched his record label 'two tone records' where bands such as The Specials and The Selecter where signed too, they also came from Coventry. Therefore this urban location is a tribute to the small city where ska was originated.

This close up of the mans feet is the shot which we are trying to incorporate with our video. We plan to use skateboarders therefore want to show close ups of their movement. The close up of the feet connotates the target audience of the band as the shoes are those worn by generally by a young generation between 15-25. The main character of the video is male suggesting the target gender for the bands audience demographic.

The frequent close up of the lead characters face tells the audience that he is the focus of the video and helps strengthen the narrative. Our video uses a narrative which will need to close ups of our male character. Close ups of performers is a convention of music videos; Goodwin claims closeups "are a demand of the record label".

As well as showing close ups of the male lead character their are also close ups of the lead singer of the band. This allows the audience to understand who it is that is being marketed and again strengthens the promotion of the artist Less Than Jake.

The video is always showing shots of the location to strengthen the urban derelict location.The costume of the lead character links to the laid back urban setting as the character appears casual in his outfit but not 'scruffy' this makes him appear confident and rebellious .This idea is a tribute to the ska band The Specials who in the video 'Ghost Town' are dressed in suave suits when driving through the derelict city. The filter used in this image shows creativity within the video which catches the audiences attention. We would like to incorporate this idea within our video to make our video stand out.

This video has a strong narrative which is the lead male character finding some sunglasses which have a special power when put on, the video then see's the positive and negative aspect to these sunglasses. Our video has a similar idea of using an object for our narrative which is drumsticks. The drummer of our band has his drumsticks stolen and needs to get them back before his gig at the end of the day. Close ups need to be used of the passing of drumsticks in order for this to work within our video. This video uses close ups of the male character wearing the glasses which allows their narrative to work.