For my next video to analyse I chose The Organ Donor by electronic artist DJ Shadow because it relates more closely to the type of music I will be creating a video for. DJ shadow has enjoyed rave reviews amongst critics but is still quite underground and therefore the video was made on a limited budget.
The Music video is concept based, and draws inspiration from the homonyms that can be pulled from the title. Firstly we have the literal 'Organ Donor' a person who donates organs. The opening of the music video shows a creepy looking undertaker man who works in a church with the dead, removing there organs to be sold or donated. The other meaning of 'Organ Donor' relates to the musical organ and the way in which samples of someone playing the organ have been donated to this new track which DJ Shadow has mixed. There is no narrative as such, but there are performance segments. The performance scenes of the undertaker on the organ and the DJ mixing aren't the actual artist, but look to replicate the way in which the music was made.
The video is made in the visual style of a horror film and can almost be criticised as being guilty of genre characteristics overload. We see iconography of the horror genre such as Churches, crosses, graves, bloodied knifes and dead bodies. The opening of the video uses the diagetic sound of the church bells ringing, smoke machine on a dark street and creaky doors to immediately give us a sense of horror and foreboding. The undertaker begins to play the organ parallel to the music track but as the track begins to scratch and break down at 3.00 we switch to watching a vicar DJ on modern decks. We see a record on the decks which is printed with 'Organ Donor', a reference to the name of the track. Although the video is based on the horror genre it is also intended to be humorous, evident when the undertaker begins dancing at 2.16.
Lighting and cinematography are both used effectively to add to the horror feel of this music video. At 1.16 the up lit strobe lighting on the undertaker's face portrays him as the typical horror film bad man. At 1.58 a key light backlights the undertaker to create a silhouette and mystery to what he is doing. When the vicar is DJing at 3.16 the strobe lighting and the LED lighting give the impression of a nightclub, but also of thunder and lighting depending how the audience reads it. Many portions of the video are edited so that there are series of quick cuts, such as around the 1.00 mark, to give a feeling of uncertainty and pace.
The audience can read this video as having an anti-Christian ideology. The religious imagery throughout, including Christ on the crucifix at 1.40, is not shown in such a manner as to promote the idea of Christianity but to challenge its importance and validity. Some Christians may find the idea of DJing and partying in a Church offensive. The undertaker is shown preparing absinthe by burning the sugar in a spoon, a highly un-christian thing to do in a church.
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