Cassius is a French house music duo, consisting of producers Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francart. I have decided to analyse they’re video released in 2010, I love you so (I <3 you so). I stumbled across the music video whilst browsing the internet, and was pleasantly surprised to have done so! The rather inventive music video portays a number of insignificant characters, however they are used to show an abstract and rather artistic image. Whilst performing/standing still, an iphone is held infront of they’re mouths. This is a key feature in the music video, as the iphones project & play a video of a moving mouth. The lyrics heard are in sync with the mouths movement. Although having no narational significance to the lyrics, I found this combination of performance and technology extremely pleasing to the eye. Below you can see an example of the medium close up/portrait shots that are used throughout:
The art directors have greatly thought through the process of filming, file conversion and upload onto the iphone. In order to create a life size moving mouth on the iphone, it must have been both time consuming and taken a great deal of editing. The camera work when recording the mouths would also have been a very precise and tough job. When filming the people singing, the camera must have been allocated to a set distance away from the mouth (to be sure of an equal on screen ratio of face:mouth). In addition, lighting would have been an element to remain the same throughout each shot. This is vital so that when filming iphone in-front of a person, the camera would be able to pick up the screen (even in bright lighting conditions). Below are a few images of the mouths which are played on the iphone screen. Note each image of a mouth is placed in the centre if the frame:
The music video created for this synth pop track portrays both stereotypical and counter typical elements. Although there is no performance shots (band etc) nor any shots of the artists themselves, the video is still considered stereotypical of a pop video. This is because within the commercial genre of pop, music videos are either split between Performance, Narrative, or conceptual ideas. Cassius: I Love You So is evidently a securer member of the conceptual ideas category as they have based it on an irrelevant yet aesthetically pleasing music video idea (which arguably could be considered a short film). However with this in mind, not many of the conceptual ideas within the industry have the element of performance within. What i mean by this, is that although it is majorly an artistic video, the fact the mouths are moving in sync with the song, can suggest some form of performance.
To conclude it is safe to state that Andrew Goodwin has had some input into the generation of conceptual ideas and framing of the shots. This can be seen within the close up shots (said to over accentuate the artists presence: according to Andrew Goodwin). However Andrew Goodwin supported the synchronisation of video cuts to beat of the track, when infact Cassius: I Love You So, bases its cuts in Sync with the vocal line, rather then the beat. This can be seen below:
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