Second textual analysis of a contemprary music video

"Tribute" By Tenacious D

Music Video Link

One of the band's most well known songs, 'Tribute' was first played in an episode on the band's tv shorts which were aired after each episode of 'Mr. Show' on the American channel HBO. Upon gaining recognition and a fan base they launched their first album 'Tenacious D' which featured the song and its Music video. The video itself was directed by Liam Lynch who had directed music videos for bands such as Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters. The video, while cheap to film, apparently running on a budget of $150, was a huge success and came 5th in Kerrang! magazine's Top 10 rock videos was nominated for two Music Video Production Association Awards: "Alternative Video of the Year" and "Directorial Debut of the Year", as well as being nominated for best video in the 2002 Kerrang! Awards.

In terms of Mise-En-Scene, the video is very interesting, starting in a shopping mall as the band enter a cheap karaoke booth where Jack Black rewires it for the band to record the song. As the song plays it switches back and forth between the shopping mall booth and the "Long and lonesome road". Costumes are nothing special, except for the demon costume, as the band are wearing basic casual clothing while the demon costume is interesting, consisting of horns and some kind of goat lower half. The sets are very simplistic with the Road being film entirely on green screen and the rest being filmed on a set made in a warehouse consisting of just the floor, wall and booth.

As for cinematography, the camera shots are also very simple, being made up of long shots, MCUs/two shots and three shots throughout. The shots cut periodically, usually without and indication and at random points, showing either the band playing inside the booth or the "Road" scene. Lighting within the video consists of a simple 3 point lighting setup for the scenes just outside the karaoke booth to make it seem like a lit shopping mall, a set of 12 regular dimmed lights while inside the booth, providing a sort of spotlight on the band as they play, and then another 3 point lighting setup in the "Road" scenes. The "Road" scenes start with very dim lighting at first, to simulate moon light and then it changes once the demon appears, using a backlight on the band to simulate moon light again and then two lights coming from the direction of the demon as his fire illuminates the scene.

Visual effects and editing play a big part in the "Road" scenes of this video, as it is made up entirely of green screen filming. The road is made to look like some kind of Navada desert road, with mountains and desert all around. The demon's effects are particularly interesting, especially when he appears, procures his electric guitar and disappears. He appears from some kind of rip in space, in a blaze of fire and continues to produce fire around his feet and a golden hue/glow around him, which was probably added not only for effect, but possibly to hide some green screen errors and make the overall editing easier. When he procures the guitar, it expands from his hands in a bolt of red lightning. Finally, when the demon disappears it withers and dies and is snuffed out in a blaze of fire, much like when fire is starved of oxygen. All of these effects were done through post processing and are quite well produced.

The lyrics and the visuals, not so much in the karaoke booth scenes but in the "road" scenes, are linked completely, as they display the story that is being told in the song. As the lines are sung they are usually acted out in the scene, for example, the line "We were hitchhiking down a long and lonesome road, all of a sudden there shined a shiney demon in the middle of the road and he said..." are all acted out in perfect timing with the song within the scene itself. The music also relates to the visuals, also more with the "Road" scene than the karaoke booth, in the sense that it sounds quite cowboy/'westerny' with the use of the acoustic guitar being the main feature throughout which links to the "Road" setting which is within the Navada desert which looks vaugely frontier/cowbowish.

Within the video, there is no real link to intertextuality, appart from the very end in which they seemingly promote their album in the way that it is produced by the karaoke booth and the old lady holds it up, obviously showing the cover to promote the album.

Tenacious D have a quite unique music style and its hard to place them in a particular genre. In terms of the video, its meant to be a comedic story driven video while in the song its more of a rock/metal/comedy style affair. There arn't really and true genre characteristics to speak of.

The video could be called performance and narrative based, probably half of each, with the booth scenes being performance based and the "Road" scenes being narrative. The narrative is prominant throughout the song, as its its main feature, while in the video it only accounts for half the footage. The video is possibly the band's most well known and loved music video and is a very accurate representation of their style. Since they are featured in near enough every scene of the video it can be said that it was mainly used to promote themselves and their appearance to their fans.

The overall intended audience were fans of the band's original TV shorts as the video is in that style. However, the video was shown on music channels such as karrange and MTV so it could be said it was intended to reach a wider audience of mostly rock and metal fans.

Since being uploaded to Youtube, the video has been viewed 14,053,185 times as of 27th of March 2010 after being uploaded on 1st of May 2007 and has been commented on almost 40,000 times since being uploaded.

Here are some audience responses.

"I'm even more stunned than the demon!"

"When the accoustic turns into the electric on the same guitar......then it starts to get epic...."

"This song is THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLDD ;D"

"its ironic, that this is possibly the best song and video in the world!"