Matt & Kim Video Analysis

Matt & Kim

Matt and Kim are of the indie genre. Their best-selling song “Daylight” has been featured on the hit UK TV show Skins, as well as the American show “Community”.  The song peaked at #95 in the billboard Hot 100. However the video has achieved over 10million hits on youtube.

The video features the pair performing the song “daylight” in various unusual places such as a bathroom, a taxi, inside a dumpster, and in a closet.

Other than the instruments, the mis-en-scene is all very typical.

Unlike in other genres, the camera does not change shot every beat or every other beat, but seems to go in a patter on waiting at least 4 beats until changing.

Towards the end of the video, they use still shots to create jagged effects, such as the band members “flying-away”. This could have been achieved with a green screen or other effects, however for their  genre, the “simple” approach is very typical.

Their first single “yea-yeah” is actually very similar in the respect that the video also has the 2 leads playing their instruments in an unusual place, this time being the kitchen. However the entire set is white, and food is thrown all over them, then cleaned, then thrown (only this time it’s people dressed as food…) and then again, the set is replaced. The camera angles are the same throughout the entire video. 1 head and shoulder shot on Kim and 1 on Matt, as well as a long shot of the entire set. The editing cuts between these 3 angles throughout the video.

The editing and overall finish of the video seems improved in their more recent videos. More locations are used as well as a wider variety of shots (just in the dumpster scene 5 different camera angles are used).

Their style of videos, very simple and “quirky” reflects what we might call indie movies, such as Juno. The soundtrack used in Juno also contains similar music to Matt and Kim, with artists like The Mouldy Peaches and Kimya Dawson.