IGAB dance teaser
Click to viewSNSD finally go f(x), but as it is SNSD and not f(x), the entire thing is given a glossy shiny clean coat of pure good-child-ness. No brats in this bunch. The power in their looks, smirks, and poses is a confidence born from a good child that believes in the power of goodness, and knows that they've succeeded because of it.
Very interesting comparing street sets and bright colors to f(x) and BoA.
The bright colors in f(x)'s MVs are extremely sharp, the edges of contrast jutting out at the viewer and given attention to. When they're not, a la Electric Shock, it's because the haze is in preparation of something coming into sharp focus to contrast with it, like the girls wielding their electric prod of choice. It all matches the music, where piercing sounds step out of the dense layers of the rest of the arrangement to make their statement before making way for the next rhythm.
BoA avoids bright colors and sharpness altogether, because the point of contrast is going to be motion, as in, BoA's sharp motion in dancing. In this way, her matching is both hard-hitting and completely at ease in flow, as the dreamy R&B smooths over its own beats. There's the power underneath in her vocals from her experience as a top soloist, but that experience is also what helps her to make it all look so effortless.
Now look at SNSD. There's splotches of color everywhere, but not only are the backgrounds of the street set given that warm glow blur effect, but the clutter of color everywhere, including in their outfits, is done as such so that we take it all in as a whole, not focusing in on the specks themselves. Oh! also used this clutter effect, as did Heavy Rotation, (and Sugar Rush) but the filters in this IGAB teaser all are used to soften the visuals more than Oh! The Lachata outfits are all decked out to make each girl very individual, but again, the clutter effect means that while we may pay some attention to individuals in certain moments, for the most part if the entire group is in the shot we take in the group as a single entity and how they interact as a whole. Rather than using extra sharpening focus to make the girls stand out from the backgrounds, the girls continually move through various stages of blurred, never achieving the super-sharp clarity of focus that f(x) do in their own start-out-of-focus closeups in Electric shock. We differentiate them because the outfits are even more cluttered than the backgrounds. We recognize that the moving bodies have smaller splotches of color than the big shapes backdrops. SNSD are more deft chameleons when it comes to image than BoA and f(x), whose forces of personality have imprinted their concepts. Yet SNSD achieve that by avoiding defining any one image in complete detail. That softening is required to let us buy the transitions.
Very interesting. The song sounds like it will be one of the best fits for SNSD as a group, maintaining their optimistic girlpower tone and not trying for any fierce/angry attitude that sunk the likes of The Boys and RDR. It's also adding that Yoo Young Jin rhythm to the Echo/Lazy Girl "happy half-electronic half-bubblegum" mold.
This is promising.
Also, I should probably give the new Japan album a look. STY and HIRO can do no wrong, after all.
lol too much amusement that the Fairies routine to that Ne-yo song was arguably better than the BAP/BTOB dance battle version. Jpop loli girlgroup outdancing Kpop boybands says too much about the sad state of Kpop girlgroup dancing.
On the other hand, this dance teaser gives a good chance that SNSD take on crunk-ish will be on par with or better than Fairies.