The video above is entitled “Better Than” by John Butler Trio, a band I love from Australia. The whole point of the song is how money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness (“So all you want is/What you can’t have/And if ya’ just look around, man/You’ll see you got magic”). The video itself tries to convey this message with visual cues, and certain words. For example, the first shot shows a fake poster which says “Make Money!: Buy All You Can.” This sets the tone for the theme of the entire video, especially for those who don’t know the song – it allows the viewer to get the message of the song/video without doing anything yet.
The whole video is set in a clearly CGId world. From that first poster, the camera pans right as we follow an array of signs that convey the same message with different alphabetical text and visual text. Then, we encounter what look like advertisements for a live show, but it is actually John Butler and his “trio” being moving images in what is supposed to be a still poster. What is interesting, of course, is that they are performing as if they are performing live in that poster, even though we know it’s a music video, so it’s not live, and also that they’re playing live in a live poster – quite a paradox. Also, the beginning used the “open up” technique, since we began with just that one advertisement, and then the scene “opened up” for us to see what was to the right of the ad. I guess panning and “opening up” can be used simultaneously.
One thing I noticed in this music video, and I have noticed in others, is that the biggest difference between these and movies is that music videos always cause a “broken wall”. Indeed, actors in a film are not supposed to look directly at the audience . because they are supposed to exist in their “cinematic universe”, but in this video, the band is constantly looking at us. I believe this is done because they want to have a personal connection with an audience to convey a message. What I’ve found, then, is that movies seem to be more disengaged with their audience, while music videos, much more often, look and directly interact with the viewer/listener. I feel like a video like this would need that kind of interaction, so I’m glad the band and director chose to break the already broken wall.
I would also argue that this video has undergone a lot of “color seeping” – in other words, it has received a lot of color contrast. Clearly, the band does not look 2D and black and white while the rest of the world is in color, so I think contrast was used to make a sharper distinction between the band’s environment and them. There was also some certain “chroma keying”, since I’m sure the band performed in front of a green screen, and then were added to this computerized world.
Finally, there seems to be a lot of “pull back retraction” going on throughout the entire video – it’s almost like the camera is pulsating. I think this is done for a few reasons: 1) actually look like a heart beating, as if money were the heartbeat of the world, 2) to bring us into the band, who think they make sense, but then have “society” pulls us back, and 3) hell, why not? It looks cool. I understand that a choice is done most of the time for a reason, but why can’t it be done just to look cool? It’s something I’ve been wondering about recently. But yes, it pulls out, then goes right back, so it is undoing the “pull back retraction.”
I’m a big fan of this video because it tries to convey two messages – don’t care about material things, and that one shouldn’t really care too much. The first message was already talked about, but we get the second in part from the first, but also the fact that we seem to be flowing from one street to another, quite carefree. Skateboarders, part of the “f*** the world” lifestyle, constantly skate by in front of the screen, reminding us that we should be that way, carefree. I feel like that is the overriding theme of the video: don’t care too much, and live your life. Indeed, life isn’t about what’s “better than”.
In case these messages were not evident, all throughout the video, there is text with messages to be decoded, but all have to do with the main message. It is done with a graffiti font, once again to code for the “street” style and the “carefree”, “f*** the world” feel. I think that feel was conveyed perfectly, and the visual choices fed well into that. Overall, terrific video by a terrific band, that unfortunately not many people know about.
