Sunday, January 24, 2016

Project # 2 - Full Music Video for "Beer & Pizza," by Small Boys

In response to some suggestions and personal creative decisions with how the video can be improved, additional footage has been mixed in with the current cut, but the video does not look significantly different from what it did before.


"Beer & Pizza," by Small Boys - Official Music Video - Michael Hubbard

As you already know, this is an extension of the idea I had set from the beginning of this term: a music video built around the common notion of the insane, the unreal, or more admissibly, hyper-real, in this case, with the stereotypical college party/music scene.

All I have shown you until now was a brief look into what the tone and overall look of the video would be, and now you get to see it in its entirety!


The music video is what you would expect after the preview I gave at my last presentation. It is loud, obnoxious, and has no resemblance to the reality of the average college party. However, what's different here is that at a certain point, the video takes a “break” under the illusion of being a brief, technical shortage. I create this intermediate break from the chaos that has ensued on-screen to help further visualize the separation between reality/expectation and the hyper-real/fantasy. For that brief moment, there is no assault of oversaturated color, overproduced imagery, or exaggeration of human behavior, there is instead an dialogue between two people waiting for the band “Small Boys” to continue playing after an equipment error who ultimately acknowledge they are in a music video and have to continue playing along. However, this conversation between the two was real and not manipulated in anyway for the sake of the music video. That being said, the technical hiccup is also fun approach to twisting the already messy structure of the music video, as well as making light of the many glitches and random shut-downs and slow-downs that have occurred here and there while making this video.

A quote I referenced earlier from Jean Baudrillard's Simulations was essentially an overlong, over-explained justification for the ludocracy of the video initial content, where he describes the "hyper-real" as a “simulation,” or better yet the “reflection” of a reality that distorts or “perverts” that particular reality to the point when that simulation or reflection “bears no relation to any reality” (Baudrillard 11). Like any other music video, especially the over-produced kind for the cheap, quick-and-easy pop songs of today, this video is a fiction of the real thing, a bloated projection of an older, more traditional person's disproportionate expectation of that activity which they are unfamiliar with.

To go more in-depth with that, another quote I would like to bring up in relation to the unexpected, interim break toward the end of the music video is one that elaborates on the signals of something that is beyond real, yet continue to distort that reality. "It is no longer a question of imitation...nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself..." (Baudrillard 4). The things that happen during the break are reminding us that all of what we have seen before is just for show and a long, technical process to commit, whether it is the abundance of footage shot or the time spent preparing and making the shot, and once that break is over, we return to the music video, but we notice that it has become more nonchalant than before and comes to a chaotic, literal screeching halt at the very end. 

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