RS - Deconstruction - Slipknot - Psychosocial

Artist: Slipknot

Song Title: Psychosocial

Year: 2008

Director: Paul Brown

Genre: Heavy Metal

Audience: 15-24

Slipknot's music video for "Psychosocial" is a performance based video as the majority of the video contains footage of the band playing their instruments along with Corey Taylor, the band's frontman lip syncing to the song. It has quick snipets of masks on fire and also objects being destroyed such as a television and a window being smashed.

"During an interview with Kerrang!, guitarist Jim Root revealed that the video features the burning of the purgatory masks adorned by the band members in the splash teaser photos shown on Slipknot's website, reportedly because the masks represent the band's ego."

"it was shot using high-end cameras which shoot 1,000 frames per second and are contrasted with traditional 35 mm hand crank camera equipment."

The music video contains performance footage of the band members playing their instruments to the song. The music video does not focus completley on the frontman, which is typical of a metal video, however he is in the footage the most mainly due to him lipsyncing. they are seen as a whole band not just one member so all of the members are in the shots and there are lots of them in all different variations of shot types.

Very quick cut shots are shown throughout the music video of things being destroyed, such as the tv, when a large metal object is dropped onto the screen breaking it. The object links to the genre as it is a heavy metal object (by the looks of it anyway!). However the shots are very short and the majority is a performance video.

Lots of effects are used for the Psychosocial music video and most importantly the flame effects which are over the lens one various occassions throughout the video. There are flames within the music video itself in the location on screen however more flames have been added in after the filming for greater effect. The location for the music video has very low lighting, the reason for this is because of the horror aspects, but also because it is a code and convention of a metal music video. The complete opposite of a pretty brightly lit pop video. The dark shots connote the genre of the video.

The music video takes another typical metal video code and convention with the excessive use of the headbang. The pop music videos have their dancing whilst the metal videos have the headbang. Yet again this connotes that it is a metal music video. When the audience is quickly switching channels and they see the headbang they can quickly determine what genre it is and watch it if they desire, similar to the dancing in a pop music video.
 

There is a "slow-mo" sequence half way through the music video which utalizes the 1000 fps cameras they used to film the video. The slow-mo effect is fairly straight forward and we could replicate it on the Mac's at school using the software available. With the slow-mo sequence there is also the use of cross cutting to attract the audience more and make it more interesting when Joey the bands drummer crashes down on the cymbals, the editing cross cuts between that shot in slow mo and the band performing.

As usual with a performance video there is the heavy use of lip syncing by the frontman Corey Taylor. Chris Fehn also does some lip-syncing for his backup vocals within the song, however there are only a few of these shots as he doesn't sing much compared to Corey. This is typical for every video I have deconstructed. The costumes used within the music video are the typical Slipknot costumes with the matching jump-suits and masks. The younger audience may be scared by the masks and put off however.

There is the use of multiple layers in the video to make the shots more interesting and once again seem attractive to the target audience, shot variation with the multiple layers and fast takes to keep them entertained. They use a flashing effect at the beginning of the music video when there are lots of fast takes for effect. The last shot goes on for a long period mainly for effect on the glass being shattered and because it fits in with the music at the end fading out, it loses tempo so the glass ends it and then leaves it to fade out.


Youtube has removed the ability to embed the video so you are going to have to watch the music video here instead.