R+P Post 9: Music videos that have inspired and influenced my ideas

Although there are numerous artists and music videos that I feel will inspire me for my music video, The Hoosiers' 'Goodbye Mr A' is one I felt personally will be most influential. This is because when I first started having my own music taste, this was a song I absolutely loved and couldn't listen to enough.

The music video follows a number of conventions:

• Lip syncing
• Mainly performance
• Artists appear in the video
• Editing matches pace of the music
• Lyrics matched to video
• Costumes change for different scenes

Inter-textual references are used to connote the upbeat action/superhero genre, fitting well with the fast-paced music.

Batman-style 'H' logo spotlight in sky

• Retro Batman-style comic artwork alongside onomatopoeic words such as "biff" and "wham" work well to convey the superhero theme.
• Pole into bat-cave style lair
• Test area
• Mr A merchandise is shown in shot alongside the lyrics 'expect me to buy it', this collaboration between music and visual works to further depict the main characters' personality in the music video as patronising towards Mr A.

• Mr A is held above smoking green vat, sign saying 'acid' - almost cartoon-like style where things are made very simple and easy to understand.

• Newspapers - Mr A was hero - Hoosiers are heroes acting like villains
• Hoosiers' costumes - tights underneath their pants - mask (classic superhero film costume)
• 1:37 - playing FIFA 08

• Simplistic rocket plan, blueprints => "Put Mr A on rocket. Light fuse of rocket. Take over the WORLD!" Very tongue-in-cheek.

• Hoosiers training up, weightlifting, like the 'journey' undertaken in many films, for example Skyfall.

• "Hoosier gonna call?", reference to Ghostbusters - red telephone draws attention to this.

• Split screen at 2:21
• Child in awe of Hoosiers, similar idea to Superman films, i.e. is it a bird is it a plane.

• Saving kittens stopping robbers, The Hoosiers carry out stereotypical heroic acts.

• Key to the city given to Hoosiers, a conventional part of many hero films.

• TIME magazine - "The greatest superheroes of our time." - A play on TIME's other titles such as "The 100 Most Influential People".

• Mr A's eyes opening at end acts as a cliffhanger to the story. 

The amount of inter-textual references in this video work really well together to create the fun, recognisable style of video. I believe for my music video I will probably include many inter-textual references in a similar way.