~Music Video Evaluation~ [Teardrop]

The final music video I have chosen to evaluate is Teardrop by Massive Attack. The song is mainly known due to being the theme tune to the TV series 'House', but the album to me is important as it features Elizabeth Fraser of the Coctau Twins working alongside an incredibly sophisticated Trip Hop/Electronica group.

The video is quite frightening in an unconventional way. Something about seeing an unborn baby singing and floating is terrifying. Initially, the camera pans downwards from the umbilicle cord to the baby floating below. The lighting here is incredibly low-key, and everything has a warm orange glow to simulate the womb. Simulating a heart beat, we see the lighting going light and dark continuously every few seconds, and much of the video is filmed in one continuous shot following the babies actions and his lip syncing. The baby is initially seen in a shallow depth of field, secondary to the bits of tissue floating aroung in the foreground. We see a close up of the babies face coming into focus soon after. The camera often zooms out and editing makes the entire screen black, so that when colour is restored we can see a new image beneath, for example the baby in a different position. When the babies face is zoomed in on he is slightly off-centre to avoid being directly symmetrical with the shot. We see a close up low-angle shot of the babies eyes illuminated as they open, developing the ominous sense of the video further.

The baby is then seen in a medium shot, his or her entire body in complete view as light flashes across their body from an outside source. We are led to believe that perhaps this baby is about to be born, although it is difficult to tell from the video. As the baby slowly fades into the darkness, we see them beginning to sink in the womb, and the lyrics and atmosphere of the song almost make it seems as if the baby is dying. The horrific image of them fading into the darkness is rather horrifying, and it is clear that Teardrop uses lighting as the main way in which to demonstrate the emotional impact of the narrative. The flashing bright lights spanning across the babies small form at the end of the video during the songs climax hit this frightening, thought-proviking atmosphere home, and we can only wonder what happened to the baby at the end - either he was born, or he's died. There's no way really to tell, which is incongruent to the almost inaudible lyrics of the song, and the atmospheric music accompanying the video.