Sunday 11 September 2011

Owl City - Fireflies

Owl City are an American pop/electronic band that were formed in 2007. Firefliesarguably their best hit, has generated huge success and has hit no.1 in several charts, including the UK singles chart.

The video begins with a shot of a keyboard type instrument, believed to be a Lowrey spinet organ, in a close up, with a hand coming into shot to turn it on. Several buttons are pressed in extreme close up, and when the stop/start button is switched on, the music begins. It then cuts to a long shot, very slowly rising to a high angle, which shows the room in it's entirety, with a man playing the organ in the left of the shot, with lots of toys in the middle, making it seem like a young child's, presumably boy's room due to the toys that are there, such a as a train set.
The shot pace is relatively slow at this point, and several lights go on to fit jingles in the song's beat, once the man presses a button on the keyboard at an ECU, in between 2 close ups of him playing the organ. After the lights have been turned on, there is another mid-close up on the organ player as he begins singing, however he is not looking at the camera so therefore he is not addressing the audience. More appliances turn on as he continues to play and this can be seen through close up cuts, before reverting back to the singer. The narrative is unclear but it appears to be that as the man is playing, it's almost as if he is remembering things from his childhood, hence these things turning on due to him acknowledging them in his head.

Lip syncing is apparent, and as the song progresses the pace of cuts increases as more appliances get turned on, highlighting the rowdiness of the scene, with key words being written onto a sort of radio box. At 1:12 the song really does kick in, and this is shown in a short close up of a globe spinning, the shot tempo increases, and the singer's body actions also connote an increase in pace. There are now more toys working and all are viewed in close up shots, that last about half a second. At 1:35 there is slight jerks in the camera movement, further showing a pace increase. The camera now has to track the objects it has to keep in focus, so there is the occasional jerking to keep the item in the shot.

The tempo keeps increasing until 2:34 when a jar of fireflies is seen in close up amid the chaos of the appliances. In a wide angled long shot of the room you can see everything in full flow, with miniature hot air balloons coming out of closets amongst other crazy goings-on. The pace keeps quickening right up to 3:19 when he turns off the organ, which slows everything down to an eventual standstill, which also shows how the video meets the pace of the actual song

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