Spanish sahara music video analysis

Music Video Analysis – Spanish Sahara

The video I have chosen to analyse is ‘Spanish Sahara’ by the band ‘Foals’. The reason I have chosen this video is because I think the camera movements and edits are suitable for the song. The first shot starts with a white screen which gradually fades into a wide shot of a huge snowy landscape. As the fade finishes and the whole shot is clear, we can see a man walking far in the distance. This shot lasts for 1:04 which is unusual for a music video but it is suitable because the first line of the song is “So I walked into the haze”. The video and lyrics work hard in hand to convey that the man in the video has been walking for a long time into ‘the haze’. The mise en scene of this shot also shows that it is very cold and tries to emphasise the idea of being alone.

The next shot is synchronized with the guitar chords that are being played and straight away we see a close up of a man laying down on the ground looking into the camera. We assume that this is the man who we seen walking in the previous clip. “Now I see you lying there”, is the line of the song which is sung over this scene. In this case the man we see lying on the floor is the front man of the band ‘Yannis Phillippakis’.

The next number of shots are all scenic shots showing bits of ice and the waves in the sea. We also see a plastic bag floating in the water which looks like it has something in, however we do not know what this is yet. Depending on what song we decide to do our music video, we might use this as inspiration and get some scenic shots to go in ours as well. It works well in this song because it is slow and it gives the feeling of time passing.

The next image is one that we see a lot in this video. We see the singer in a close up shot

where we can only see his face and a white background behind him. In the shot he is singing the words to the song. In this shot the singer is staring straight into the camera which means he is making direct contact with the audience. We also see the wind blowing his hair as he sings which again emphasizes the cold atmosphere that he is in.

The next shot refers back to the plastic bag in the earlier shot. We now see the man dragging the bag out of the sea by a rope and as we get

closer we finally come to see that there is in fact a dog inside the bag. This shot accompanies the repeated lyrics, “forget the horror here, forget the horror here”. We as the audience do not know why there is a dog in a plastic bag or why he is dragging it out of the sea. The music video never actually explains why this is happening so it leaves a lot to the imagination of the listener/viewer.

After this shot there are a number of other scenic shots which show the sea covered in bits of ice. These images could again represent the cold surroundings that this man is in.

The next number of clips show the man dragging two dogs in plastic bags with him through the massive landscape in which the video is set. We don’t know where he got the second dog from but that fact that he is taking them with him

could mean that they were his dogs or even just because he felt sorry for them. We see the struggle he has climbing up the hill with both of the dogs but still he perseveres and continues to take them with him. We do not know what he is going to do with them yet. At this point the music is building up and getting louder.

Finally as the music comes to its peak and the whole band come in, we see an image of a fire where the flames are burning quite high, it is not until a couple of shots later that we see Yannis stood between two fires, which we assume are the two dogs that he has found. This is quite a powerful scene as it works well with the music and the lyrics that are repeated throughout the extended outro of the song, “I’m the fury in your head, I’m the fury in your bed, I’m the ghost in the back of your head”.

As the music starts to come to an end, we see the fires starting to burn out and we go back to some more slow motion scenic shots of the area around. A couple of these shots are shown and then the screen fades to black to bring the music video to an end.