Kickstarts Analysis

Example’s Kickstarts video is about the relationship between a man and woman which often has its troubles but they manage to pull through it. Despite these issues arising, sometimes is quite trivial ways, he just ‘imagines life without’ her and falls in love all over again.

The primary shot used in the video is a close-up, this is a song very driven by emotion (mostly joy) and this type of shot allows the audience to realise that easily. This is also useful in engaging the audience because it really shows them how they are feeling so they can understand the characters much better; it has the ability to move the audience much more than longer shots.

The video begins with a close-up of a (male) tapping foot, this then becomes a split-screen with a woman’s foot being shown alongside it, and it continues to multiply until there are a total of 16 different shots of tapping feet being shown. This creates interest because it is only the beginning of the video and this strange foot-tapping segment asks questions. This split screen theme continues throughout the video and shows a wide variety of people in a similar situation to the main relationship, this signifies that the message in the song can be applied to just about any relationship between any people, it is by no means unique. The way the split-screen works varies, sometimes they have the various couple shuffling between the same situation (sitting in a tent for instance) or it is arranged so that the top, middle and bottom of the screen show different people. This results in the total ‘person’ having a different head, body and legs which again re-enforces the message that anyone can be in this sort of relationship. They even combine close-ups and the split-screen so that the face has a different mouth and eyes, this composition is strange and draws the viewer in.

The audience is also engaged through instances of humour, such as using objects in the ‘head-body-legs shuffle’ so that the feet may be potatoes on forks or the head is a sweet stuck on the end of someone’s finger.  The entire message of the song is wrapped up in a short sequence where the girl laughs at blowing bubbles in her drink, but the man looks confused, he then looks in her eyes and ‘imagines life without’ her and plays with his food too.

In conclusion, the video for Example’s Kickstarts relies on creating confusion and a bit of randomness through the split-screening technique to create interest and engage the audience.