Tom's A2 Media Portfolio

The Hoosiers were formed in Indianapolis in 2003 and has since relocated to Bracknell in Berkshire, and has since made four albums: The Trick to Life, The Illusion of Safety, The News From Nowhere, and The Secret Service. This song, Worried About Ray, was released as a single in 2007 which reached number 5 in the UK singles charts, and the album it was on (The Trick to Life) reached number 1 in the album charts. This album also had another popular single, Goodbye Mr. A, which reached #4 in the UK singles chart.

​

The music video for Worried About Ray was released on the 2nd of October 2009, and has had over 2,500,000 views since then. Both the song and the video are a tribute to Ray Harryhausen, who was a visual effects creator and made a form of stop-motion animation known as “Dynamation”. Harryhausen was involved in a myriad of films (most notably being the 1963 release of Jason and the Argonauts) in which he did stop-motion animation of monsters and beasts that was then put with live footage. As such, the video focuses around a stop-motion monster animator, called Ray, who’s cyclops creation comes to life and attacks the band. At the end of the video, there is also a message that reads “Inspired by the films of Ray Harryhausen”.

​

The video starts off as a performance video, however the video is a narrative one, as it follows the story of Ray and his creation. The video is in high key lighting and uses a lot of pastel colours, which gives it a washed out look which reflects a lot of the early colour films, as they often had the same light tone. Throughout the video, despite it being narrative, the lead singer is almost always lip syncing when he is in the shot.

Close to the end of the video, the performance aspect of the video is removed entirely, as Ray’s creation escapes the house and attacks the city, causing the Hoosiers to go and take it down. This segment is a far more direct homage to Harryhausen’s work, as it integrates stop-motion animation with real life camera footage, similar to much of the films that Harryhausen was a part of.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

While the band is indie rock, they use stable camera, most likely to reflect the old moves that it is referencing rather than upholding a low budget, indie representation. Many of the choices in editing are done to reflect this high budget look, as it relies on straight cuts and uses a few zooms throughout the course of the video to look relatively high budget. However, the aforementioned pastel colour scheme suggests an overarching “low-budget” sense, since it tries to be reminiscent of old movies.