Michael Jackson - Thriller

The music video to Michael Jackson’s Thriller single was produced by George Folsey Jr.

and directed by John Landis in December 2nd 1983. It was distributed by Columbia

Pictures and Epic Record Productions, Thriller was the most expensive music video of it’s

time costing $1,000,000. Thriller wasn’t just a music video it was a full fledged mini

horror movie, at 14 minutes song Thriller opened the doors to a entire new side of

the music video industry it proved that a video could be more about the video and less

about the music. At the beginning of the video it starts off as a film,

Michael Jackson and his date in the film run out of gas and end up

walking through the woods. Just after he tells her how he feels

about her under the full moon he unexpectedly starts changing into

some sort of werewolf beast. The special effects as this point are

remarkable for the year that the video was made. She is screaming

uncontrollably and begins to run away from him . Non-diegetic sound, e.g. in this case the

background music really enforces the fact that she is terrified as the music has a very

horror film sound, and pace to it. As soon as this scene ends it cuts

back to the both of them sitting in a movie theatre, this again really

gives us the feel of it being more of a short film than a music video.

As soon as they exit the movie theatre this is when the song begins.

The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals are very easily

recognized, a line from the song when Michael Jackson sings “It’s

close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark” his body

language as he sings this line is posed in a very creepy way trying to scare the girl.

Every part of the mise-en-scene in this video enforces the feel in the video of the creepy

goings on in the night. For example the setting, the dark dull street that they are walking

through looks scary enough in itself. There is also a narrative over the top of the video

which says “Darkness falls across the land , The midnight hour is close at hand,

Creatures crawl in search of blood, To terrorize y'alls neighbourhood” at this point in the

video they have just walked past a graveyard where zombies suddenly start arising from

the ground and from coffins. Here there is a direct link with the

lyrics and the visuals as if it is telling us a story and then

showing it to us. Throughout the video there are not many cuts

to the beat, but more of Michael Jackson and the zombies

dancing to the beat. It hasn’t got many cuts to the beat because

it has been created to be more like a movie not like a music

video. The genre of Thriller is classed as pop, but it wasn’t a

typical pop video for it’s time. Unlike other music videos that were around at that time, like

Phil Collins You Can’t Hurry Love of 1982. This video compared to Thriller is like chalk

and cheese, they are completely different in every way possible. Phil Collins video is a

typical stage performance with his back up singers doing some daft dancing back and

forth while he is simply centre of stage singing at the microphone

and that is as far as the video goes. The video Thriller also has

many close-ups of Michael Jackson singing although mainly

focusing on his dancing as it is visually the most fascinating thing

in the whole video putting aside the zombies of course.