The Scissor Sisters ‘Only the Horses’

The video for Scissor Sisters Song ‘Only the Horses’ is 4.00 minutes long, the Scissor Sisters worked with Calvin Harris and Alex Ridha for the production. It fits into the Dance, House Genre, which you can tell by the use of colour imagery, used against a real life setting.

The video starts, based in a natural setting in the dessert, and the camera is focused on a Pyramid (with four iron hole covers in the middle of it) the camera zooms into the pyramid so we can analyse it closely. The pyramid is symbolic of the story that is about to take place. We also can identify this as the sound is diegetic, you can hear the sound of horses running, which also symbolises what’s going to happen in the video, as horses are the main feature in it. The diegetic sound then cuts out and the sound track starts, and so does the next part of the video.

The lyrics during this Song are repeated to emphasise what the video is showing, also to highlight the Song Title ‘Only the Horses’ At 56 seconds the chorus of the song kicks in, and the

lyrics ‘only the horses’ are repeated matching the image of the horses running in the desert. The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals here is clearly emphasised, an example from Media analyst Andrew Goodwin’s Book Dancing in the Distraction Factory. This Particular imagery could also represent Joe Gow’s identification of the special effects extravaganza, in his book ‘Music Video as Communication:

Popular Formulas and Emerging Genres’ as human performance is overshadowed by spectacular imagery, which you can see in the two example images which are cut from later on in the video.

The video changes pace through-out as some parts are in slow motion, where-as some parts of it are at normal speed. This is so it can cut to the beat of the track, and highlight where the pace picks up in the song. The image of the horses running changes from slow motion to normal pace during the chorus, this could be to highlight when the chorus starts and ends, and an example of this is at 56 seconds into the video. This effect has been highlighted by media analyst Andrew Goodwin, stating there is a relationship between the music and the visuals, as the imagery is illustrating the lyrics. The Video definitely cuts to the beat of the track, as you get engaged into the video whilst listening to the song, which to me identifies the connection between the two. When the track speeds up so does the video, making the two works well together in achieving an entertaining music video. Instead of a piece that doesn’t keep a good pace or cut to the beat. After analysing the video closely I would say that it fits into the ‘Art music video’ cater gory from Dianne Railton and Paul Watsons book ‘Music Video and the Politics of Representation.’ as it adopts artistic techniques to produce an artistic effect. You can clearly see this at 1.41 seconds when we are introduced to a falsely created image, as we have moved into a studio setting. The Artist effect is created through the use of bright colours and paint on ‘thrown over the band’ they are not lip sinking whilst they are in the video, suggesting they wanted to keep the focus on them as a whole Mise-en-scene.

The record Company is trying to sell the band in this video, as they are sticking to what they do

best, which is using bright imagery and colours. As the scissor sisters are known for their wild colours and use of peculiar imagery in their music videos. There are only a couple of individual close-ups of the band members but they are covered by paint, so I wouldn’t say that the main

task from the record company was to try and sell the band through close-ups. The Main story line for this video is for the horses to pull the paint of the band members, I think the story line is clearly told through the video especially at the end. They use the pyramid again to ‘pull the paint off the band members’ I think using the pyramid for this part was really effective as in the beginning of the video the pyramid was the first thing we were introduced to.

The uses of horses in the video almost make you think of film imagery. This technique was highlighted by Andrew Goodwin, as he states “there are likely to be intertextual references, either to music videos or to films and T.V Texts.” I think this idea represents the horses in this video as they almost make you think of an indie film, the idea of horses running though the dessert. It has a really good effect on the audience.

The end of the music video ends with the same image as the image used in the start, as you can see from the two screen grabs above. I think this has a really good effect on closing the music video, as once again it relates to what Andrew Goodwin said about Intertextual references to film imagery, as in films you find they go back to what happened in the begging, this is what is happening in the music video and its made it clear what has happened through-out the story line.