'Pumpkin Soup' Video Analysis

The first video I decided to talk about is by Kate Nash and it's called 'Pumpkin Soup'. I chose this video because I thought it gave me a pretty good representation of Kate Nash's music style. Looking at videos like this one will give me a good understanding of what features I should include in my video to make sure it looks up to standard

Snapshots from 'Do-Wah-Doo', 'Mouthwash' and 'Pumpkin Soup'.   

The genre of this song is Indie Pop and this is Kate Nash's typical music genre. The video is set in this fantasy world made up by the main characters which are Kate Nash starring as 'girl' and Wesley Goode starring as 'boy'. The simple 'names' given to the characters suggests that they represent a young teenage couple and this will be a story about love.

 

In the beginning of the video they 'meet up' on a huge red telephone where you can see the boy looking at the girl and talking to her, looking very excited to see her. The girl, on the other hand, seems like she is day dreaming and not thinking about him at all. This shows that the boy cares about her, but perhaps she doesn't feel the same way about him. The colours used in the video are very pure and simple: pink, green, baby blue, white, orange, etc. This adds to the picture as it shows that when two people are in love everything around them seems wonderful and the colours represent that. The colours are all quite girly which shows that the female character is more dominant in the video.

In this video the characters are dressed to suit the setting. Their costumes are in the colours of the surroundings so they don't really pop out even though they are quite bright. In the first shot of the video you can see the girl wearing a light blue knee length dress with wide straps and a white ruffled shirt underneath. The clothes that she wears are day-to-day ones and she looks like she isn't trying too hard, another typical feature of this music genre. This would be unusual for a genre such as pop, which helps differentiate the two music genre. In pop music the artists normally look pampered and extremely well-presented, typically wearing a lot of make-up. In that same shot the boy wears dark jeans and a light blue shirt, which is a similar colour to the female character's dress. His tie is red, and it pops out from his outfit. It also matches the red buttons on the girls dress and it makes them look like they have a connection.

In the next shot we can see the girl holding a huge white daisy. Her outfit is in similar colours to her previous one, consisted of a simple red t-shirt tucked in blue high-waisted jeans. Simple outfits are typical for the indie pop music genre and the bright poppy colours are typical for this particular artist.


Towards the middle of the song (1:28) we can see both of the characters standing next to each other. The guy's cardigan is in the same colour as Kate's top which shows  that they have similar tastes or that he takes into account his opinion when it comes to clothing. This is a cute idea which makes the video look like a fairy tale.

The style of the video is unrealistic and it looks like a fantasy/fairy tale. The setting is made up of cardboard trees, costumes of cats, balloons and unrealistically big objects (telephone, toys, daisy). It gives the impression that the character is in wonderland, quite like  'Alice in Wonderland', as nothing around her is real. Again, this represents that when two people are in love they only see the good things happening to them, and think that everything is perfect around them. The song is quite light hearted and upbeat and the video is created to match the tempo. The lyrics are simple, which adds to the cheerfullness that the song brings to the audience.

The video has a narrative story which means that the characters act all the way through.Kate Nash and Wesley Goode  performed well as actors, although their characters stayed the same from the beginning to the end of the video. I think the story line would have been a lot more interesting if there were more emotion and feelings, especially towards the end of the video. This would help the audience sympathise to one character or another and make the video outstanding.