Sunday 11 September 2011

Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song

Bruno Mars is an American singer/songwriter, born in Honolulu. His career began to rise in 2009 after he changed record labels and he has subsequently been a huge sensation, with many notable tracks. However in September 2010 he was arrested in Las Vegas under suspicion of possession of cocaine. He pleaded guilty and his charges were a $2000 fine, a counseling course and 200 hours community service.

The Lazy song is one continuous cut, and contains Bruno Mars using the mode of address convention all the way through, with the 5 monkey characters also in the same shot, the beginning of the video suggests that it is filmed by webcam due to the hand in front of the camera, before Mars leans back, ready to sing. The monkeys act almost as the backing singers for the whistling and other parts of the song Mars does not sing. There is no real narrative, almost emulating a self recorded song and dance routine done by a typical you tube poster. Key props are seen to be the sunglasses the 5 characters wear, and the chequered shirts, along with Mars' computer chair, these can all be seen on screen as mise en scene, also the backdrop further suggests it is a typical webcam post due to the normality of the house they are in.

Halfway through a man who appears to be Mars' room-mate appears in what is clearly his sleeping outfit, as he yawns as well, he comes to the camera and puts on a woman's voice before the monkeys take him away. This is an example of how even thought they are using one consecutive shot, different distance shots can be used as it can be seen that the room-mate is in a long shot, then walks forward into a close up, before being dragged away back into a long shot.
The song and dance routine is continued until 2:48 when Mars is thrown a guitar from off-screen, another key prop, and he begins to play it for the last segment of the video, before throwing it back at 3:02. The room-mate comes back into shot and dances along, before Mars uses a confetti machine to end the video with them all almost celebrating a perfectly performed routine.


1 comment:

  1. Can you find other examples of one-shot vids? I've blogged on this...

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