Can I Call You Tonight is a music video produced by Dayglow; the song was produced in 2018 and the music video followed shortly after. Dayglow is an artist with the an indie/alternative style, and this music video in particular gained 107 million views. Although this video gained such popularity, none of the artists other songs have been nearly as successful as this, and the artist is averaging around 6m monthly listeners.
I would argue that this video is either performance or conceptual, as the performers can be seen lip-synching to the camera, and the audience is directly addressed through close ups of the singer. The most prominent argument for this video being a performance video is the fact that they are performing throughout the duration of it. Additionally, the setting don't reflect the lyrics, and there is no real narrative element of the video, apart from some images (the multiple phones shown throughout the video) reflecting the lyrics.
Overall the aesthetic of the video is quite vintage and retro, and the video seems to revolve around nostalgia. In "Can I Call You Tonight?," Dayglow deliberates about whether he should or shouldn't make a call to someone he cares about. Details like the power being out and the batteries draining add to the speaker's anguish throughout the song. I think the use of the animation and green screen is what is particularly odd about this video. The images displayed throughout the video are for the most part completely unrelated to the lyrics; we have images of skeletons, robot dinosaurs and cheetahs- all completely random and sharing no similarities to the actual meaning of the song.
The video uses lots of animation in their video, though most of it isn't of any good quality. The whole of the video is filmed
with a green screen, although this doesn't demonstrate any technical excellence, if anything its the opposite. The video uses bad animation throughout and even has parts where the greenscreen is obstructing the artists face.
Because of the videos messy and unprofessional approach to this video, I think the meaning of it is just to be fun and upbeat. It could be argued that this video is a criticism of how weighted music videos can be nowadays. Lots of new or mainstream music videos are very professionally made, and can be quite political and push certain ideologies. I think that this video is trying to regain the element of fun and creativity without fear of being called out.
Although their isn't a lot of 'professionalism' in the videos choice of visual and technical codes, the song itself features an audio code; a standard telephone intercept message, when a call is attempted to a number that no longer exists. Following this, we see a small sequence that doesn't feature the artist, and instead has subtitles of two animated characters speaking the lyrics of the song. This sequence in particular seems like it could be from a video game, which could act as a referential code as these may be characters from an actual game. I think the use of this sequence in particular is extremely retro and further enforces this idea of nostalgia, as we can infer that this animation or game is quite old, judging on the visuals. Additionally, during the video, there seems to be a film grain over it, which demonstrates this idea of an old-fashioned retro style video.
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