Radiohead's 'There, There...'

Dir. Chris Hopewell,

Radiohead's video for 'There, There...' is a serial music video in which we see the main singer in Radiohead, Thom Yorke, walking through the woods with strange anthropomortic woodland animals acting out human like events such as a wedding, feast and within there cottage like houses. The narrative then moves on to a hanging coat within the forest surrounded by crows. It then moves on to Yorke putting on the coat and shoes and running from the birds but failing to get away due to the woods seeming to consume him and turn him into a tree.

The video uses a lot of different techniques to create the correct atmosphere and aesthetic quality of the video. One noticeable way in which it does this is the use of both animation and real footage. And the video itself connects these techniques by using stock motion in the real footage to create an animation like quality to Yorke's walk. This also is the case from animation back to footage as the video ends with Yorke turning into a animated tree. The aesthetics the camera and post production create an archaic or old looking video which is created using a sepia like filter along with a darkened framing to the whole video to make the video look like an old black and white silent film. The use of lighting to highlight certain aspects of the video is used throughout. Such as when Yorke is seen looking around a tree and a beam of light goes across his eyes as he looks left and right. also used to highlight the coat, the wedding and the small tree cottage.

The music itself starts to crescendo and become more dissonant as the narrative comes to what appears to be the answer to the enigmas throughout the narrative, such as why is he walking through the woods, why do the animals act like humans etc. This being the hanging coat much like the golden fleece in Greek tales that Yorke has come to collect. These enigmas are what keep the audience questioning and carry on watching the video. The change in the mood of the music pushes through the narrative much like conventional equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium style. As the equilibrium is broken as the narrative moves away from the woodland creatures to the coat. The disequilibrium is Yorke being chased by the crows and then the new equilibrium is Yorke being turned into a tree.