Our Deal by Best Coast
Drew Barrymore is really not a bad director. I quite enjoyed Whip It and this video, while a little cliche, looks gorgeous and is directed well. Plus, Chloe Moretz whom I just adore. So really, there isn’t anything too bad about this clip at all.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any extended period of time, you’ll tend to notice I bang on about the same things a lot. Mainly editing, story lines, colours, and other basic things they teach you first day of film school. And obviously, this is a clip where the story is the main focus.
The thing about it is, contrary to other videos we’ve discussed where either there is no story line, or the story can’t hold the viewers attention for the full length of the video, this clip demonstrates something that doesn’t come up too often, and that is it feels like too much story is trying to be packed into 4 minutes. Nowadays we don’t get that as artists are indulgent and if it takes 15 minutes to tell a story then by gum, they’re going to make a 15 minute video. But not this time. This time it’s all crammed in. And while we’re still able to relate to the protagonists and empathise with them, it all happens at such a fast pace that it’s difficult to keep up.
Ok, so the story is Romeo and Juliet and it’s not like we need to go into any in depth details as I’m fairly certain, everyone knows what happens in Romeo and Juliet (spoiler alert: everyone dies) but the video still moves too fast for me to be able to appreciate everything in it.
The costuming and colouring is just beautiful. And the perfectly choreographed fight/dance sequence has so much going on that I would have liked more time to enjoy the experience and really feel involved with this beautiful world that has been created. I know long music videos can be frustrating but this is one where I think if they’d taken 15 minutes to bring the audience into the world, I may have shed a tear at the final reveal rather then just sighing and moving on.
