Bombay Bicycle Club- Evening/Morning

Bombay Bicycle Club- Evening/Morning

Bombay Bicycle Club’s music video to Evening/Morning is part narrative and part performance based, it uses costume and editing to tell the story and stop motion style editing during the performance. Bombay Bicycle Club are a London based indie rock and folk band, this is quite a specific genre of music within which, very little conventions can be drawn, so the band have a lot of creative opportunities to establish these conventions, hence the bizarre events that take place in this video. Being part of the indie genre usually pigeon holes artists into a mainly performance-based music video, however, this video mostly consists of a chase between two antagonists and the protagonist- a panda (the lead singer) the chase is mostly conducted on foot apart from when the panda rides a pink children’s bike.

There is no mention of a panda running away from two men in the lyrics, meaning the idea was put together by the band and a director to go with the melody of the song, this works well due to editing and extravagant narrative. The idea of a chase connects to the title of the song, which, ‘Evening/Morning’ is an ongoing chase that perhaps the band members have experienced. The video starts with what looks like a game of hide and seek but with the panda as the seeker, when he takes his head off and notices the two antagonists, looking alarmed.

The video is edited very skilfully to the beat, it cuts at main beats and some drum kicks, this makes the video look very slick, these edits range in pace, especially at the beginning when the speed of the song increases gradually. There are few static shots during the chase scenes, this intensifies the excitement. There are many shots that you rarely see in a music video, including an over the shoulder point of view shot when the girl gives away her bike, these shots are usually seen in soaps or films. Bombay Bicycle Club’s videos usually include a performance at some point, this is also to do with the genre as indie bands usually have a performance element in their videos.

As the video is quite entertaining to watch, it will be spread through social networking sites and as word of mouth, this is what the record company want, when people talk about the video they are publicising the band altogether. The record companies want people to enjoy the video and make them research further into the band’s discography. There are many instrumental parts of the video, one of which is right at the start when the chase begins, the editing is crucial here as every time a note changes there is a cut, this proves very effective. The instrumental part in the middle of the song is illustrated by a performance, the whole band playing in the street until the two men return to chase the protagonist again. When the band are playing an element of ‘stop motion’ is seen as they change clothes and position due to different editing and shots, it is a simple and effective technique.

The music is constantly changing pace, at one point the lyrics go “we can speak at slower speeds” and the syllables are elongated, here the editing is slow and the footage is even made in slow motion, the lips still sync up with the lyrics which is a very difficult technique.

There are many notions of looking, these are conveyed as the antagonist’s point of view when they are searching for the panda. There is a shot from the panda’s point of view (when the girl is wearing the head of the panda) which shows the frustrated men as they have been fooled as well as when the lead singer notices the two men running towards him, evoking a surprised expression.