Music Videos

For my music video presentation I have chosen to use 'Stronger' by Kanye West and '12:51' by The Strokes as my prime examples since they both contain the three main elements most commonly used in music videos that I would like to highlight. These are: Intertextuality, perfermance and concept.

Kanye West - 'Stronger'

The video is directed by Hype Williams and it features cameos by Daft Punk and Cassie. The track features a sample from the Daft Punk track 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' (hence the cameo roles) and is a combination of a concept and performance based video. The video features a heavy use of intertextuality since it uses a scene by scene reenactment of the anime 'Akira' (as shown below).








Above: The cinematography in the video is made to remainese the Neo-Tokyo look of the anime.








Above: The video features a many shot by shot reenactments of the anime.

The Strokes - '12:51'
As with all of their previous music videos, '12:51' is directed by Roman Coppola and continues with their trend of having an 'anti-cool' image. The track uses a distinct keyboard-like sounds produced by a guitar and has been decribed as having a 'retro' feel to it. The video was inspired by the futuristic look of the 1980s film Tron and the influence features heavily, in terms of intertextuality, in the video (as shown below).

Left: A shot of the the lead singer of The Strokes from the '12:51' video.

Right: A shot from the 1982 movie 'Tron'.