As you may know, I am a Video Editor – and one of the things (probably the main thing) that inspired me to work in television post production was actually music videos.

Music videos are one of my favourite things in the world and I spent hours and I MEAN literally hours when I was growing up watching them Even now in the modern world, I can find myself getting lost on YouTube watching music videos for hours on end – they are an addiction.

This month we are going to be taking a look at the music videos of Alkaline Trio. I have been listening to this band on and off since I was a teen but I had never seen their music videos. It was only when I met Matt Skiba last year and he was so nice to me that I started to take a huge interest into all of his music. The band have some really great videos but since I only discovered them recently I thought it would be a nice contrast to last months feature band.

Alkaline Trio – We’ve Had Enough

Why did you choose this particular video?

This song yet again has an interesting music video that is fun to look at both an editing and graphics perspective, I really like the way it creates ghosts figures throughout and sort of has elements of horror films to it. I really like the style of editing to the video as whilst the shot changes are subtle it allows the narrative of the video to take president which is sometimes really needed.

So, what is the narrative?

The band members of Alkaline Trio are ghosts and their main aim is to haunt the family who live in the house. The family soon start to realise that the reason that they are seeing ghosts and that there are creepy happenings in the house because their son has dug up the skeleton remains of the band that were murdered.

Favourite parts of the video?

When you watch this video through at first you just think “oh this is another band just being ghosts” but when you watch the narrative and realise how haunting it is by the end you realise just how clever this video is right from the start. I have realised with a lot of Alkaline Trio videos that they always turn out not how you expect and yet again I find myself faced with another video I could write an essay on (but I won’t).

Yet again the first few shots of the video I find are something of great importance from an editor perspective, they may be subtle but from that pan down the old fashioned radio there could be a lot to think about when looking at that. The way that the camera pans down the radio and the light of the radio is technically connotes the direction in which the spirits are heading from and that is very clever. Also the radio has a faint emblem of the Alkaline Trio logo…nerd alert,..going to stop before writing an essay….

The next part of the video we have to talk to is the ghosts – they effects of the bands as ghosts is very effective and the lack of colour really emphasises their persona in the video and creates a real haunting effect – yet again creating the horror element.

The final thing that I want to talk to is the television – again as an editor I really admire the techniques gone into this – they could of just created a TV static image of the band but if you look close at these scenes there is a lot more to it then that – they change the noise patterns and also the width of the noise when it changes shot to shot – very subtle but it makes all the difference.