analysis

1. Blur - Country House
Music Video Analysis
by Victor Chan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4Spl8jGnk

2. Theme and message
Theme of the song is about how Blur regard city and
country. From the lyrics and the expression of the music
video, we can see how much they hate city and their love
towards country. They use many good techniques to
illustrate this idea.
To get a better understanding of
the song, we need to know what’s
the message of the song. It is a
good starting point to analysise.
city vs country

3. The first shot
The first shot starts with a long
shot of a building, which is also
an establishing shot to show
you where this story happens.
The zoom-in to that specific
window tells you the exact flat
where they are at.
gives you the first impression of
the whole music video. It is also
the opening of the story.
2nd shot: The members are
inside the building!
zoom in
The 2nd shot: it shows
all the members of
Blur. They are all in a
flat and close the
curtains. It’s strongly
expressing that they
are isolated inside a
flat. They are
imprisoned, confined.

4. Key element of the video -
Escape From The Rat Race
still in the flat:
They are playing ‘Escape From The
Rat Race’, then the scene jumps to
the plate of the game.
You can see the whole scene has
changed to the game plate. All the
band members are now trapped in
the rat race game.
It is a metaphor of the city and rat
race. They are all living in city as if
they are playing a rat race game,
which means city lives are endless,
self-defeating and pointless. They
are just lab rats running in a maze.
the next scene - on game plate:

5. Key element 2 -
Country House
the country house
The representation of the country
house is totally different with city. City is
interpreted as a rat race, but country
house is an Utopia to them.
Every time before the chorus begins,
the camera will zoom or use other ways
to get a close up of the country house’s
door. It mean the character in the video
now moves to the country house.
The lyrics used to describe the country
house are very positive. Such as herbal
baths, ‘watching afternoon repeats’,
etc. All the words to describe the life of
country house are very relaxing and
peaceful.
jumps into it!

6. Images and lyrics
When I just mentioned ‘Rat Race’ previously, the main scene of the video is set on the rat race game plate.
All the subjects mentioned in the lyrics are illustrated to be the props in the video. There is a strong
relationship between the lyrics and the images.
Music video is a visualised way to
illustrate a song. Therefore, the images
of the video mostly sync with the lyrics.
‘Thought to himself oops I've got a lot of money’ ‘I'm caught in a rat race terminally’
‘I'm paying the price of living life at the limit’ ‘It preys on him, he's getting thin’
The lyrics of the part
which describes the life
in city have the same
expression. Because
they are trying to
express how they hate
about the city’s life, the
word choices tend to
be negative. They use
‘rat race’, ‘limit’,
‘anxiety’ to describe te
city’s life.
Instead, the life in
country is much more
relaxing. So the words
‘big house’, ‘rural
charm’ are used to
express this relaxing
tone.

7. ‘He lives in a house, a very big house in the country’
‘Watching afternoon repeats and the food he eats in the country’
‘He takes all manner of pills and piles up analyst bills in the country’

8. ‘It's like an animal farm lot's of rural charm in the country’
‘He doesn't drink smoke laugh, takes herbal
baths in the country’
Those are some examples of how
the images matches the lyrics. They
used many props, such as money,
rats, limit sign, etc to visualise
their lyrics.
So the audience can easily get the
situation of the story of the song.

9. The Editing Techniques are used to create many
interesting tones
Fast motion:
When you are filming a tragedy, use
a slow pave. But if filming a comedy,
use fast motion. This is quite a
common rule in filmmaking.
In this music video, the part of the
guitar solo is presented by fast
motion. The tone of the guitar solo
actually sounds brisk. Therefore all
the shots and images are hilariously
shown to match the tone of the
guitar solo.
In this fast-motion part, the doctor is
chasing the ladies and the ladies are
chasing the band members. The
whole set looks chaotic. It’s showing
people relaxing themselves, doing
something silly without a good
reason. As if they just got released
from stress.

10. Slow pace:
In a part with a slower pace, the images of the song and the
cutting rate would also be decreased. Right after the guitar
solo, the music break is the slowest part of the whole song.
Therefore, the rate of the video has become slow as well.
I don’t use slow motion to describe this part because it really isn’t. But
the idea of this part is just opposite to the part of fast motion.
‘Blow, blow me out I am so sad, I don't know why’

11. They don’t just share the same tone with Bohemian Rhapsody. They
also want to refer to another song which the audience are familiar
with, it creates a resonance to them. Both songs have a fast part
and a slower part, the scenes with less editing are also graphically
slow. The visual style totally matches the pace of the scene.
Queen - Bohemian
Rhapsody music video
This part is actually an
intertextuality links to
the legendary rock
band - Queen’s
Bohemian Rhapsody
music video.
The music video of
Bohemian Rhapsody is
dark and sad. Therefore
in Country House, a
similar technique is
used to share the same
sadness which
Bohemian Rhapsody
also has.

12. effectively interesting for music videos
Jump cuts:
Jump cuts were considered awkward
before. But in music video, due to the
editing doesn't have to follow the
continuity, but the beat of music
instead. It perfectly fits the ridiculous
and hilarious tone of this music video.
Audience would not like to see the
images going like in films. The images
have to move quickly because
audience easily get bored in music
videos. So we need a fast cutting rate
and even jump cuts should be used in
music videos in order to keep
providing new, interesting images to
the audience.

13. The Band Members should be shown so that the
audience can access to their idols
Like many music videos of the
bands, the leader (usually the
vocalist) has the most screen time
in music videos.
In Country House, there are total 14
close-ups of the vocalist - Damon
Albarn are shown. It tells you he is
the one who has the most attraction
to the audience.
He is also frequently being the
centre of frames. It shows his
importance of the whole band.
But the other members, each of
them has only around 10 shots of
them. The screen time of members
shows who is the most popular one.
Damon Albarn

14. It seems a bit unfair to the other members, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave
Rowntree because Damon actually steals all the screen time. We actually cannot even
take a clear look at the others; they almost don’t have any close-up. The audience can get
any message from them. The whole song is presented by Damon. The audience cannot
access to the other members. In theories, the songs are contributed by the whole band,
so they should have a slightly fair screen time in the video.
Graham CoxonDave Rowntree Alex James
It is hard to say to explain why Damon has most of the screen time in the
video, but we can guess by knowing who contributed the song, or even
the band the most. According the Wikipedia, it doesn’t clear listing who
wrote the song and lyrics on each song, but it claims Damon almost wrote
all the songs’ lyrics. He is also the leader of the band. Therefore Damon is
the focus the whole group, also the most valuable part of the band.

15. Similar situations also happened in many famous groups/bands. Even though they perform
their music as an image of groups, there is still a most important member in a band. Pulp is
a good example, Pulp and Blur both were famous Britpop band in the 90’s. They shared
the same honour in the music industry. Pulp has an image as a group, but the one actually
got honoured was only Javis Cocker. The rest of the members were not even widely
recognised by public. The band was said could maintain good standard of quality music,
even though there were 23 former members kept quitting the band. It means Javis Cocker
was the only one has significant contribution to Pulp. As a result, Javis was also dominating
the screen time of their music videos.
An image of a band is also important to be considered. Blur was a band with a young,
rebellious image. Punk was not a new genre in the 90’s, but Blur’s Britpop style was still
preserving the rebellion from Punk. Therefore, the visual image of the band is very
important. Due to the image of Damon was said to have the most good looking of the
band, the record label might want to show more shots of Damon’s facial expressions.
It is also the reason for there are huge amount of close-ups for Damon Albarn.

16. The Representation of women
According to Andrew Goodwin’s elements of music videos,
music videos usually contain sexual images of women.
Women play a role of being sexual. It can be traced back to
the silent film era when women were portrayed as showgirls.
Nowadays’ music videos are still preserving this conventions.
Even though the women are not exactly being showgirls, the
representation of them is still sexual and suggestive. The
reason for it is they wanted to attract audience, especially
males keep looking at the music video. It is hard for the
audience keep watching for a few minutes, so they provide
images of female bodies as an extra spice. Male audience
would have imagination of the female bodies.

17. It also shows what’s the social status of women in this video. Since
the theme of the song is about the stress in living in city compared to
the relaxing life in country, it emphasises the relaxedness of living in
country. Therefore, they use a lot materials and items to describe the
relaxing life of country, such as watching tv, having herbal baths and
eating all day to show how comfortable it can be. They use females
as their desire, by putting them into the scenes of country house, to
emphasise there is anything men want.
The women in the music video are dressing fashionable. They are
costumed to be men’s desire and catching men’s attention. There are
also many shots of showing their bodies, like wearing short skirt to
show off their legs. It doesn't only happen on their clothes. For
example, there is a scene which the ladies are taking herbal baths,
they raise up their legs in the bath. Also during the guitar solo, they
are being chased by men, it shows the men’s strong desire of women.

18. The last shot
The last shot goes back to where it begins.
Now they’ve opened the curtains as if they
free themselves. Then the camera zooms
out back to the long shot of the building.
The world of the frame has suddenly
become wide. They are not trapped inside
the building anymore. They are now
watching the big world.
As a conclusion of the music video, it
responds to the first shot.
zoom out
Then it pans left to show
you the outside world and
the country side outside
the city. It’s a good
technique of storytelling.
Because they didn’t show
you the world outside the
city in the first shot. But
now they show you the
world of freedom is just
right in front of you.
pan left
Looking to the big wide world~

19. Aspect Ratio
The music was made in 1995, when Internet was not even popular.
Due to the limit of Internet, television was the most effective way to
broadcast music videos. The TVs in 1990’s were still mainly made in
4:3. Therefore, this aspect ratio perfectly fitted the house TVs perfectly.
Aspect ratio is a practical way to
reflect what media the music video
is shown.
4
3
If we trace back to the
time when the music
video was made. We
will know what kinds
of media they used to
exhibit this video.