LEARNING OUTCOME TWO PART II

MICHAEL JACKSONTRILLER

Michael Jackson also known as the King of pop is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time. His contributions to music, dance and fashion along with his over publicized personal life, made him a global figure in the music industry for over four decades. He is the eighth child of the Jackson family. He debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1964 and began his solo career in 1971. Through stage and video performances, Michael popularized a number of complicated dance techniques such as; the robot, and the moon walk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive sound and style has influenced numerous hip-hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B, pop and rock artists.

MICHAEL JACKSON

JOHN LANDISJohn Landis (born August 3, 1950) is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. John is known for his comedy films, his horror films, and his music videos with Michael Jackson.John Landis began his career at the age of 18 when he dropped out of high school. He went from job to job and slowly but gradually became more successful as he fulfilled higher roles over time in his career to the point when he became a director. Some of John Landis previous work is the very well-known horror film ‘An American ware wolf in London’. John directed several music videos and films but this film in particular stood out from the rest as it is extremely similar to Michael Jackson ‘thriller’ video. The film and video share the same concept and theme and present a very dark / dull visual. John Landis incorporated a lot of his camera work into Michael’s song and made it prosperous as he has had experience and the expertise in Horror films in which it shows.

CAMERA WORKThe camera work within this music video is very similar to the camera work that is used in horror/thriller movies, for e.g. slow tension building tracking shots, fast moving extreme close-ups, dolly zooms for shock effect and worms-eye-view shots in order to make Michael look intimidating and scary as a zombie this is done to enhance the factor that this music video is supposed to be like a short horror film.

EDITING

The editing of this video is innovatively clever as the editors clearly edited the video to have elements of shock and surprise (to match the horror-like theme of the song and video). The video starts off with a short film that is a recreation of a teen werewolf film; the viewers are then taken back by the shock that the beginning clip is not the actual music video itself, but a video within the Music video. The video is also edited in a basic narrative format (as the story is followed from the beginning, middle and end), this allows the narrative of the story to be clear to the audience and for the suspense and tension to build up for the cliff-hanger ending.

GENRE CHARACTERISTICSFor any genre of any music videos there are always several characteristics used to fulfil the theme and the idea of the genre. In this music video ‘thriller’ follows the genre of the pop song as it displays many aspects of it that people can associate with a pop song. For example, dance chorography is shown in this video which tells people it is a type of song people can dance to. Many artists use this in their video as it is more entertaining and enjoyable to watch. However in this video Michael has created his own dance routine that has become so successful that it is recognized worldwide and thought of when this song is played. This music video definitely follows the main concept of a pop song as it uses many different bright colours throughout the duration of the video which is seen as a connotation of happiness and enjoyment just like other music videos.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LYRICS AND THE VISUALS

Thriller was the last single released by Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, and it’s safe to say it is one of the most famous music videos of all time; this may be because it was his first unmorally long length video and unique and optimistic narrative, which caused a lot of buzz within the industry and audience. Makers of this video had a clear concept to sell the song and not the artist. Due to the fact that the music video corresponds with the lyrics and theme of the song and doesn’t focus much on Michael Jackson himself (he seems to be playing a role within the video), you therefore realise that the music video was an attempt to entertain the audience and sell the song, which worked extremely well in Michael Jacksons favour as the entertainment value (such as the memorable dance routines, and uniquely cunning concept) the music video contributed to Michael Jackson’s Legendary status.

“Something evil's lurkin'in the dark”

Although Michael Jackson is playing a characterless role in the narrative of this music video, some element of it still express all the features that make Michael Jackson so unique, such as the zombie dance routine (as Michael has always been well-known for his dance moves), and his statement costume (during the time period of the ‘Thriller’ album, Michael Jackson started a trend with a red jacket he repeatedly wore in other videos like ‘Billie Jean’ and live performances). All these elements that were featured in this video were there to promote a certain image that was being sold to the audience, and relate it to the other music videos released from the Thriller album.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC AND VISUALS AND NARRITIVE

The song thriller cunningly combines with the title of the song, as the tempo of the song consists of slow creepy mid-tempo (blended with audio that can be found in most trilling horror films) that suddenly transforms to a more upbeat fast-tempo, which climaxes the thrill of the song and acts as an anticipated murder scene in a horror film . Editing and camera work of this music video seems to have captured this audio movement and edited the video to be parallel with the beat. This is shown by the way the camera movements and editing differs throughout this video, because at the beginning of the video (refereeing to when the music starts on the full length version) the camera movements are quite slow and mellow (such as slow tracking shots when Michael Jackson and Ola Ray are walking along the round) and the editing is fairly basic (as the cuts between the shots are quite minimal), this is of course to match almost slow/mid-tempo of the song. As the song and dramatic state of the video narrative peaks, and tempo get faster, the camera movements become faster and more stimulating (such as the fast rotation movement in the part before Michael transforms into a zombie and the drastic camera tilts during the famous zombie dance routine) and the editing get more exciting (because the duration between the cuts between each shot), this again is to match the faster speed of the tempo within the track.

As this music video consists of a narrative, a majority of it follows a story, leaving not a lot of solo instrumentals or lyrics to be illustrated by Michael Jackson (this means that the artist is facing the camera and miming the lyrics), nevertheless there are some parts where Michael is singing along to the music, but not to the audience. Due to the fact that the track ‘Thriller’ changes tempo, the video pace follows this well. All the elements of the video such as the camera movement, editing (cuts), dance routines and even lighting changes with the track (as the track gets faster the cuts and shots move along faster and consistently, the lighting get darker and creepy and the camera moments begin to get complex and superior).

In this version of the video, all this is evident from 0:35 to the end of the video

VIDEO STYLE AND ICONOGRAPHY/ MISE EN SCENE

During the length of this music video there are numerous signs of iconography. One part in particular stood out than most was at 04:18 when ‘Vincent Price’ was written on the top of the movie theatre list. After seeing this I researched into Vincent Price and found out that he had produced the voice over in the music video. It is represented here:

And here:

INTERTEXTUALITY/ VOYEURISMDuring this time Thriller came out, Michael Jackson was fairly young and appealed a lot to a younger audience, because of this, Michael kept most of his videos as accessible and watchable to a large variety of people of all ages, this meant keeping the video and his music free from explicit language and imagery, which is why this music video doesn’t consist of any intersexuality or voyeurism.