Thursday, 10 December 2009

Lily Allen - Alfie




The second Lily Allen music video I am going to analyse is 'Alfie' :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RgOm_WJKpE


Alfie reached number 15 in the UK charts in 2007 and was Lily's fourth single released from her debut album 'Alright Still'.


Like in the 'LDN' video Lily has one costume through out the music video. Lily wears a bright yellow head band, a simple white and blue floral dress with dark blue peep tow heels with red detail on. Lily keeps the jewellery simple and she is not wearing the trade mark earrings in this video, but she has gold bracelets on her wrists. Her make up is very similar to LDN, a gold neutral eye shadow with black eye liner above her eye, the eye liner is not as thick as it is in LDN which gives a more natural touch. Lily still has her thick full fringe, but her hair is down and straightened and appears very long, which could perhaps be extensions.




The song 'Alfie' is about Lily's younger brother Alfie Allen and how she worries about him sitting in his room all day watching TV and smoking weed. The narrative of the video is again very simple but through the use of colour and humorous aspects the video is very amusing to the audience. Alfie Allen is a very small puppet in the video, and his room is a tiny cupboard under the stairs. Lily is in the kitchen carrying out productive tasks such as ironing Alfie's small clothes, washing up and looking in the newspaper for a job for Alfie. She visits him in his room the first time to see if he would like a cup of tea, but he appears high on drugs so she takes his computer control away from him. The next time she goes to his room to give him the ironed suit but walks straight out when she find him mastrubating under the covers to 'barbie porn' which is a very funny scene in the video. There are many other humorous aspects of the video such as Alfie dancing at the end and mooning to the camera.










The use of colour is also a key element of the video, like the LDN video, bright colours are seen through out the Alfie music video. In the kitchen, the walls are bright blue, the kitchen utensils are red and orange and the hall way outside Alfie's room is lime green. However, Alfies room has darker colours to create a contrasted effect, due to the darkness and hazey smokiness of his bedroom. In the LDN video, red was the dominant colour. In the Alfie video, less red is used, but the red details stand out strongly against the green, blues and yellow drawing great attention to it. Alfie's hooded top is red and although he is very small in size, sue to wearing that colour he stands out immediately in the frame. Other details in red include; the kitchen utensils, the pen Lily uses to circle the jobs and the kitchen table cloth.


The Alfie video also uses simple camera shots and movements. The camera zooms in and out of Lily whilst she is in the kitchen, which is different to the LDN video, as in that video the camera was still whilst Lily made big movements, compared to the Alfie video that zooms in and out of Lily whilst she is barley moving. Extreme close ups are used to show detail such as; Lily stirring the tea, Lily knocking on Alfie's bedroom door and Alfie's facial expressions. Many long shots are used to show the whole of the scenery in the frame and interaction between Lily and Alfie in one frame.

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