Skrillex – First of the Year (Equinox)

Structure: Narrative

Director: Tony Truand

Producer: HK Corp

Written By: Skrillex

Genre: Dubstep

The language for Skrillex’s, “First of the Year (Equinox)”, resembles a horror film in the themes that it has and the narrative. The structure of the video is completely narrative as it tells a story and has no performance aspects at all. This is conventional of the dubstep genre as dubstep artists don’t actually play instruments as it is mainly created on computers so showing any performance would be boring to watch and the videos wouldn’t be very popular. Most dubstep songs don’t have music videos as the genre is quite niche so the artists don’t have the funding to create music videos to promote their songs however Skrillex is a mainstream artist and is seen as the best dubstep artist so a lot of his songs have videos.

                The narrative of this video is a paedophile following a little girl into an abandoned warehouse with the suggested intention of sexual abuse however the girl turns out to be a demon that lures in and kills child molesters. The audience are unaware of this when the paedophile is following the girl so thy are concerned for the child and then the audience feel like there is some sort of karmic justice has been achieved which fulfils the uses and gratifications model as the audience feel anxiety and then have the anxiety relieved as the narrative progresses.

                The mise en scene of the video was effective as locations such as a playground help with the semiotics of the video to show that the male lead role is a paedophile and the other location is an abandoned warehouse which resembles a horror film. This is a convention of the dubstep genre as the songs often sound creepy due to the constant changes in pitch and unnatural sounds created. The shadow of the girl at the beginning of the video is similar to the shadow style of Nosferatu which works well with the horror film style that the video has. The Rohypnol bottle shows the audience that the paedophile has dark intentions and so the audience lose any empathy they might have had tor the man for the foreshadowed events. The video uses lots of low key lighting to create the horror film feel and it works well. At some points in the video the lighting is so low that the subjects look like silhouettes. I like this a lot and I will probably try to imitate this visual style for my own music video. Another style from this video that I liked and will try to replicate is the girls eyes, in the video she starts with regular eyes but when she leads the paedophile to the warehouse she has full black eyes. This is done with black sclera contact lenses and I plan to buy some to use in my video. The only noticeable colour in the video is red which symbolises danger and is used well to carry the creepy tone of the video. I don’t personally like this so I will avoid using it in my video. The moving dust creates a nice visual effect to show supernatural activity. It works well with the theme of the video as it allows the director to make the audience see more than he is showing which would be good for me as I don’t have a lot of money to create lots of practical effects. The part of the video when the paedophile is surrounded by old dolls is a convention of horror films. Specifically those of director, James Wan, who regularly makes horror films about Victorian style dolls. They represent all of the paedophiles previous victims, which is why some of the dolls look old and others look fairly modern: to show that he has been a paedophile for a long time. The demon hands that pull the paedophile back to the girl make a good effect and would be fairly easy to replicate so I might try to imitate the effect. The hands themselves are long and creepy looking, which helps to maintain the style of the horror film genre. There is one point in the video when high key lighting is used: at the end when the girl is adding to a tally chart to show that she has killed many paedophiles before this one which reinforces her role as the protagonist.

                There is a lot of technical editing and CGI in the video to help create the demon effect. The effects work well to create the horror film genre. I would be able to replicate these effects with Adobe After Effects if I chose to use these effects however I do not wish to create a CGI demon for my video. The other editing techniques in the video are mainly just cuts.

                The cinematography of the video is very varied. There are lots of close ups to show detail and emotions but there are also a lot of long shots to fit more into the shot. There were a lot of tracking shots so that the camera was moving, this is conventional of music videos as it makes the narrative seem faster and therefore the video becomes more exciting for the audience. At the beginning of the video when the girl is skipping towards the warehouse, there is a lot of empty space in the shots which the paedophile walks into to fill the shot making him look dominant. This is a convention of horror films so I will use this in my music video as it helps to make the video look scarier and creates anxiety for the audience.