Michael Jackson- Thriller was released on November 30, 1932, its release was very important and influenced many generations of future music videos. It quickly became a best selling album and is well known to everybody. It took nearly 3 months to film and ended up being 14 minutes long. This particular music is a blend of narrative and performance. It was different to music videos made because of numerous reasons:
1. It was made and produced by a men of colour. Back then having men of colour present in the music video in general was odd, which thriller also did so it was a rather controversial video. 2. It had a lot of narrative present unlike previous videos. Watch the video again without music, I dare you. It will oddly make sense because it had a very though out story line present and almost resembles a mini horror film. 3. It included people other than the band itself which was common. Thriller is a classic everybody says and I agree. If the quality was a big better I believe it could pass as a modern music video, but there is one thing more modern music videos definitely have different that this one. The length. Modern day music videos length vary, but most hit the average of 3 minutes as producers have realized if it's much longer the audience will loose interest. This video however was nearly 14 and to my feel had a bit too much narrative involved. The audience in the 1930's were most likely shocked by this new style so were intrigued by all of it. When it comes down to production I think its very carefully made. Every little detail thought out. The video starts with a narrative of a couple, Michael Jackson and a girl, in the woods at night you can immediately notice the dark background of the the video, this you will notice goes through out the whole video except the very end where all the horror is over and the background lightens up. In this Video you will notice a lot of choreography with multiple people in it which was also rare to previous videos. The choreography is very slow and robotic to represent the zombies. Now lets look deeper into the scenes. In scene one, the video starts without any music playing and the first shot is an establishing shot put on a dolly as it follows the car as it moves. It then moves into an over the shoulder shot to give us a bit of an idea of the characters in the car and to establish that this is Michael Jackson video as he the main character in this little pre story line. The couple runs out of gas so the decide to walk, the camera shows a shot panning upwards from worm's eye view to show us their faces at neutral. In this first scene they have a lot of close up shots of the characters individually where there is no background sound to build up the story. The story then has a twist when the main character, Jackson, says that he is a werewolf but even before he says it the readers can know its coming due to the music building up whilst he speaks. It starts quite quiet then steadily builds up until it reaches its loudest point, where the character turns into a werewolf. The producer then shows many xcu shots, which a very close up shots, showing the transformation. During the whole scene the video is dark to give is a effect of mystery. The scene ends on a close up of the werewolf roaring into the screen which is very effective. The second scene is quite long. The first part includes a close up shots of the two main characters and then a couple long shots all at eye level. The scenery turns very murky and dark. Jackson's outfit is fully red which may represent love and passion to either music or the lead woman but also evil as he later turns into a zombie. Or it may just be Jackson trying to stand out and show off. During this part they are always to the left of the screen with some road in front of them until they pass the grave yard. Having them in that positioning allows our eye to travel a full circle from right corner, where the eye is naturally drawn too, until the bottom left where they are positioned. This part is mostly a performance and consists a lot of Jackson just singing and dancing will casually flirting with the girl. Multiple times you can notice that Jackson's dancing is specifically choreographed to fit the lyrics in the song. This also happens with the background noises, which includes a couple screams. During this scene you don't see a lot of the background because its quite smudged. It smoothly moves onto the next scene by having a zoom into the graveyard. This next scene I find quite interesting. The singing stops and you can see quite a scary misty looking graveyard in the background. A additional tune is played and a voice starts narrating. The voice seems unusual to a music video as it is not rapping, or talking to a beat but simply narrating as you would see in films or in storytelling. In zooms closer into a graveyard and slowly you can observe a hand reaching out and a zombie climbs out. You can notice that the narration is followed up by the actions of the zombies. All of this brings a rather spooky feeling and although may not scare modern audience would seem likely to give the shivers to the readers in 1932. I feel this bit is the most odd in a music video and feel as if in modern videos would be shortened or cut out in general. You can notice none of the zombies costumes have bright colors and the almost blend into the background at times. Whilst this is happening there are a couple closeups of the zombies but you don't see the two main characters. The two protagonist then are shown walking towards the camera but because its a closeup you cannot see the zombies surrounding them. The next shot is take from a high angle leaning down towards the couple as the zombies surround them. It's followed by multiple closeups of Jackson and a couple zombies but then the music shuts of completely. As background noises of sort of mumbling is added. This shot is taken from behind. You then see a closeup of only the girl and suddenly with an surprise noise track she turns around to find Jackson a zombie. They only added her in the closeup to provide the audience with a shook factor to the main character turned into the 'villain' almost. We then have a zoom into the girl and the music suddenly starts. It pans out in a choreographed dance with Jackson leading. The movements in the dance are very stiff and slow. After a while of choreographed dancing with a large group of people, which was uncommon in previous music videos, which showed a lot of high long shots the singing comes back on. The dancing continues with Jackson now singing. The singing stops again but the music still plays showing the main female character running into a dark house. The tracks turns off once again to involve more of the narrative uncommon in modern music videos. The background still quite dark. The house involves little props but a couch on which the girl scrabbles on to and the camera is whipped into a shot of Jackson and the zombies zooming into Jackson's face. The close in a show a xcu of the girl face and the suddenly the background lightens up showing modern house and Jackson calling her to wake up. This is the last scene. Through out this whole part the music is off and background noise compared to previous scenes is minimal. The background compared to the rest of the video you can notice is lighter more inviting and friendly and color of the background is quite neutral and calming- blue. The very last bit though darkens a bit and Jackson turns to show his were-wolf eyes leading back to the beginning of the music video. And that's it.
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