Third song: IF I DIE IN BATTLE

Song: ‘If I die in battle’

Artist:’ VAN CANTO’

Producer: Napalm Records

Styles:

Narrative: The video has a storyline about marching into battle and beating down your enemies without leaving anyone behind.

Impressionistic: The video is quite impressionistic in the way in which a battle would have been fought and how people would leave the families for war. It is also quite influenced by fantasy games due to the fact that there are certain looks and characters such as the wizard and the orc.

Conventions: 

Song type: The Conventions of the music which are used are of both of heavy metal and cappella bands. The reason for this is that the band themselves are a cappella band who focuses on heavy metal music. Van Canto start the video almost live with their backs up against a wall in the video singing towards the camera but later in the video, they use their voices to imitate instruments such as the guitars

Song Lyrics: The lyrics can only be interpreted as marching into battle with your allies by your side. It can also be interpreted as engaging in a fight in any war as the lyrics could matchup to other battles such as World War 2, the Vietnamese war or even the Israel war.

Techniques: 

Cutting to beat: Cutting to the beat is used throughout the entire video but what is unique about this is that the cutting to beat is only used during the part where it shows the band members singing. Cutting to beat isn’t used when the two factions are fighting in the video but choreography is used in its stead.

Computer animation: is used to help showcase some of the scenery which would be hard to locate and to highlight specific people/actions/scenes. Examples would be at 2.32 where a knight is shown in battle stance which preludes to the scene at 2.36. It also gives a more olden, Fantasy look to the video.

 

Stop Motion animation: stop motion is used within the computer animation as an effect at 2.07 to 2.09. This matches the lyrics as he seems to be getting larger as if he is gaining power and standing up. It can also be seen as him having people behind him who can fight with him such as the war scenes within the music video.

Chroma Key: chroma key is used to a give a unique feel to the battle within the video and make the magical characters increasingly believable as the setting seems based around the king Arthur era where legends were common. It also seems that the entire video has been edited to be a yellowish cream colour to make the video look olden which matches the Arthur theme and to match the computer animation which looks like it is on parchment.

Live footage: live footage is used in recording the band singing to show the feelings of the actors singing the song as well as show their teamwork. Shots are either focused on them alone or all together as a group which matches the fighting were its 1 vs. 1 or everyone as a group against the other faction.