The music video that accompanies British punk band Slaves's song 'The Hunter' is very much a performance based video which amplifies the lyrics for the song. The video is quite experimental in the sense that the video focuses a lot on the visual effects used in conjunction with the music. Andrew Goodwin talked about the use of 'thought beats' in his book 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' which is the idea that you can actually 'see' the music. This video is a good example of this, through the incidental cuts and the visuals moving in time with the music etc.
There are some parts of the video where it can be considered that the video actually illustrates the lyrics. For example, Isaac sings 'Keep smiling through your teeth' and the next shot is of a person's teeth smiling. Another example of this is when the lyrics say 'were crying to be fed' and Issac mimics the action of crying in the video.
Andrew Goodwin also commented on the importance of 'star image' and 'star iconography' in music videos. He pointed out that record labels demanded more and more that the artists appeared in the music videos in order for the audience to feel a sense of connection to them and to associate the artist with a certain 'look' so that they are easily identifiable. Slaves are known for having a certain recognisable 'look' about them - for example, they wear a lot of Fred Perry and Adidas Originals, crazy patterned trousers, round sunglasses, dr martens etc. The video conforms to this idea from Goodwin about star image by including countless close ups of the band members throughout the duration of the video, which allow us to learn about their recognisable style and see the different aspects that make.
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