Music Video Analysis - Pumpkin Soup by Kate Nash

The first video we looked at was the video for the song 'Pumpkin Soup' which was also sung by Kate Nash. The video was directed by award winning director Kinga Burza from the video production company ‘Partizan’. As Pumpkin Soup is an indie pop genre song, its music video utilises many conventions/aspects expected of the genre. An example of these conventions is the use of a bright colours and lighting in the mise en scene. For example, the colour 'red' is an occurring theme throughout the mise en scene and the video itself. This use of the colour red is also probably due to the nature of the song as it is about romance. Apart from the dominating colour red, there are also other bright colours such as yellow and white from objects in the video (i.e. the set design and furry cat costumes). The location used in the video is a studio with a purpose built set where features of the set are evident of the conventions of the indie pop genre such as a bright colour scheme with colours like green and pink. Purpose built props are also featured in the set i.e. there is a big, red rotary dial telephone.

The narrative style of the video is illustration. The illustration aspect of the video is from the performance (which occurs constantly throughout the video) of the singer. The performance involves the singer and background cat characters dancing to the music. There are also moments when the singer lip syncs to the music. As for the balance between the narrative and performance, the performance happens when the chorus is occurring where as the narrative happens when normal verses can be heard.

With the camera aspect of the video, a variety of shots are used. These shots include close ups, long shots, two shots and medium shots. There two main forms of camera movement and they are tracking and slow zoom. The tracking movement is not as frequent as the slow zoom. The slow zoom is frequently used during the chorus where as the tracking movement is used only twice. The slow zoom is the most effective aspect of the camera as it is not noticeable but stops the shots from being stale and static.

The editing in the video for Pumpkin Soup makes use of a fast cut rate as well cutting to the beat of the song. The fast cut rate is highly noticeable as it is frequent (most of the shots last no more than 3 seconds). Unlike the fast cut rate, the cut-to-the-beat aspect of the video is only implemented for the first 20 seconds of the video (where only the instrumental can be heard). As the instrumental/beats progress the video follows the changes in the music. The post production effects in the video are only present during the beginning and end of the video. These effects are cartoon style fonts and cartoon style bordering. The effects are used to introduce the video and also to announce it's ending.

Our opinion on why the video is effective is that the video makes excellent use of the camera with a variety of shots, fasting cutting shots and as well as a visually pleasing mise en scene (such as the purpose built, colorfully attractive set and the dancing cat costumes in the background). The illustrative narrative style of the video and the performance given by the singer add to the successful view-ability of the video.

Kate Nash - Pumpkin Soup on MUZU.