Animal Collective My Girls

Animal collective

My girls

• The video ‘My girl’ by Animal Collective was animated by the illustrator Jon Vermilyea, in the video there is little attention drawn to the artist there are no close up shot of portraits of band members. Only singers lips can bee seen at black bodies in coloured scenes which eventually become green and melt at the end, I think the reason behind this was to create a video that was completely about the music which may contribute to build an individual style of the band.

In the animal collective video there is a definite link between the music and visuals from start to finish, the beats correspond to the flickering light and computer generated bubbles flowing on screen. The silhouettes of people dancing are also linked to the music as the dancing increases in intensity with the music. I think the boldness and colour scheme of the artists corresponds to the tempo of the music at the start of the video at 0.23 seconds the silhouettes have a low opacity at 3.00 minutes the artist are bold in black I think this could represent the most intense part of the song and towards the end of the song at 5.24 the artists are light green and melting which I think represents there energy and shows structure to the video.

You can see the boldness of the artist corresponding to the intensity of music, the lips the only features highlighted in the video I think this is to represent them as instruments and music as the predominate feature.

• I think animal collective are easily identified as an alternative electronic band in the video, I think the computer generated media and the use of the artist dancing represents an electronic band. Similar to chemical brothers which also centre there video around a subject other that the band. The video’s main focus are the artists and there instruments I think this represents a raw innocent style, the band are portrayed as being purely about the music by not using glamorous sets or close up portrait shots of the artists.

• There isn’t a demand for close up shots of the artist as they are seen more for there music and sound rather than an obvious super star status, they rely on there sound to sell them as a band. I think by defying this convention they have created an artier exclusive image as a band, which may have a similar outcome to using lots of close up shots but is portraying the band in a different way to appeal to different people.

You can see from this extract how animation is used to create a electro style and how the instruments are the main focus.