Research, Aerosmith - Extension Task

The original music video for the first hit single “Dream On” by the American rock band Aerosmith is made up of a live concert at different angles and shots, which contrasts and makes each line of the song give a different feeling, for example, at the beginning, the video shows the orchestra playing, whilst a few seconds in, shows Steven Tyler’s face for a second, this shows how important he is, this is shown because the orchestra is shown as a whole lot where as Steven is shown on his own, making him the important member right from the beginning.

Furthermore, as time passes within the video, within the time period of 0:22 and 0:40, an object is shown to be lowered to the stage, this become clearer that is a piano and a man is playing it, at 0:43, that man is shown to be Steven Tyler and he is one again the centre of attention because he is the lead singer. The music video goes on to be nothing other than a live show, which is what most music videos are like within that era; Guns N’ Roses have done the same with the original Paradise City music video or even the song “Rock N’ Roll All Night” by the famous rock band Kiss, they are shown performing their song in a concert, but only difference is that the crowd level has been lowered and song volume has been maximised to make it look more like a dedicated music video rather than a simple concert, captured by a hand camera. The genre expected from this particular band was not as well illustrated as it probably should have been; this is due to the orchestra shown throughout the whole clip, Aerosmith are known for their hard rock genre, large outside concerts, and the only sound coming would be from the guitars, Steven Tyler leading, Joe Perry backing and the crowd screaming, but to see something like this, an orchestra, Steven Tyler on the piano and all happening inside a building is definitely a turn of events. But this quickly changes, near to mid-half of the video, as you hear Steven Tyler screaming passionately about this song, drums being hit like it is a jungle and the guitarists ripping a hole in the space and time continuum, just when the audience starts to wonder why this is the music video to one of the greatest rock songs ever made and to the song that lifted off the careers of the most famous band in the world, they realise that it doesn’t matter where this is happening, the only thing that matters is that it is happening, Steven Tyler is singing and people are enjoying themselves. The narrative of the clip is very linear; it goes from beginning to the ending, no interruptions, which is something you wouldn’t expect from a music video which is a live concert anyway, unlike one of the music Videos from Kiss, which shows different clips from different live concerts and a variation of images used within the video. Below is a screenshot of the clip and the link to the video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Qd9VR1gD