Red Hot Chili Peppers – Look Around

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a American funk rock band that formed in 1983 in Los Angeles. The music video I am deconstructing of theirs is created for a song called ‘Look Around’. The song is upbeat, groovy song with a punk attitude and a slightly jokey nature. The video was directed by Robert Hales on the 25th January 2012

Overview of the videoThe video consists of each band member in a different room doing different things. This, along with a rapid editing pace and a surreal mis-en-scene for each room makes a really interesting, different and over all odd music video.

The setting for each band member was extremely surreal and different to each other. This made for a real contrast considering there was a transition between the rooms every 5 seconds or so. This room for the drummer sums up the genuine randomness of the rooms. With a grotty looking bathroom with pale colours and a punch bag that matches the drummer’s outfit, it creates an atmosphere of complete chaos. This fits in well with the chaotic beat of the song. I really like this randomness of the setting. It seems perfect for the culture of this genre of music: letting go of yourself, being weird and wonderful and breaking taboos. I really feel that it also adds a comedic value to the band, and exemplifies that they are not completely serious and I like this as well. I feel that if we are to carry out our plan of creating a music video for funk rock band that this idea of being random and weird is a great inspiration and it was one of the main reasons why I decided to pick this video to deconstruct

EditingThe editing within this music video was, in my opinion, brilliant. The way that the transitions between each room gave the illusion that they were all attached to each other gave it a really surreal feel. I also like the zoom effect that occurred where the camera would zoom into different areas of the room at a quick pace. This allowed, along with the very fast editing pace, the chaotic atmosphere to be exaggerated. I feel that I could incorporate this into our music video if we were to create a chaotic effect because it is a simple, yet effective way to do it.

The transition to create the illusion that each room is attached to each other makes the video seem to flow easily and stay as odd and weird as it is intended to be.

The camera shots within this video were actually very minimal. It seems that just a lot of long shots where taken and then molded together to create with transition effect. This would have been hard to do because they would have needed to be the same distance from the subjects to make for a realistic illusion. Apart from that there were no other shots. A lot of zooms were done but quite obviously within the editing seat because of the perfect zoom. Even a steady cam on a slider could not have done it so smoothly and quickly. These ended up creating a lot of macro shots that didn’t seem to focus on much. This further exaggerated this chaotic atmosphere.

One of the most important aspects of this music video was the action of the band members. This was because they were so random and destructive but funny and interesting. The surrealism and randomness of the women coming out of a fridge and the dog just being there exemplifies the culture of funk rock and backs up the un-serious vibe and enjoyment that the band is having. This created a persona for each member, and this persona was helped by the mis-en-scene of each room. For example with the singer being in a dark red room connoting passion and volatility was dancing around ridiculously being extremely crazy and energetic, whereas the guitarist in the grey room was very secluded and static. This explains to me that one key thing to do when creating a music video is to use mis-en-scene as the most important tool I have, because without the colours and setting fitting these actions they would have been pointless.

My inspirations from the videoWhat I really like about this video is the way that they managed to fit something so random and surreal to the actual culture of the music. I like the way that the band member act and create their own persona. I feel that I wouldn’t try to re create the same vibe and represent the same culture but the whole idea of it as a whole really excites me. Their craziness and the way it’s not serious is great. I also like the transitions to different rooms. I feel inspired to create something like this but use this sort of transition to go into a different setting. The inspiration from this video is so broad, but so crucial because its made me start to think of what video I want to create.