thoughts on A.C.E 'PINATA' M/V
I'm trying to figure out why A.C.E's 'PINATA' M/V is so great. I've been watching it over and over for three days now? It's excellent. I have been out of touch with kpop for reasons of I am no longer catastrophically depressed but it skips a lot of what I kindly think of as the "nonsense bullshit" of most kpop videos.
- It's basically a performance video. I'm biased towards this, because the dances are my favorite part of kpop, but this M/V especially is really just a showcase for their choreography and that massive group of dancers they got, which seems to be where they spent most of their money for this comeback. I'm a fan of this! I don't really need to see the guys singing at a camera for half the song, no offense to them. They do a bit of the kpop-standard glamorous pan of the boys suggestively posed in a full beat, but mostly the video is really just the dance. It feels focused for that reason, instead of busy, which is the adjective I'd normally apply to kpop videos.
- Related: they got all these dancers so the scale is huge. Massive, massive sets that are totally bare, with tons of parts where the actual idols are taking up very little of the screen. The mirror at the back adds to that sense of everyone being dwarfed. In general, this feels like a very pulled out video, as opposed to pushed in. Comparatively few focused face shots, tons of large-scale group shots emphasizing the size and shape of the choreo (which is what this song loses in live performances).
- They were also really conservative with the outfits. Everything they wear in this video is essentially a deconstruction or variation on the initial suit: full suit with vest, the blood cuffs showing, and black gloves; same but minus the jacket; then they take off the vest but add the waist cinchers/corsets. The outdoor scenes have got them in the same or similar suits but with white shirts and white gloves before they swap back to the corsets and blood cuffs, and then the last dance inside has white shirts and black vests without jackets. That's still technically a bunch of outfit changes, but visually everything is pulling from the single standard of black dominant suit silhouette with the red or white as a highlight. Plus they've all got black hair, so it feels very continuous. It feels like a bold choice to make no effort to distinguish the members from each other; I'm used to them committing to everyone having a slightly different vibe that the visuals in the M/V tend to highlight.
- I like the lighting in this one. Yet again another part where simplifying it seems to have made it feel more intentional, not less. I especially like the cold, almost septic light they use in most of the indoor choreography sequences: when it's combined with the blood cuffs it gives me the vibe of a Victorian surgery, but the riot cop outfits on the dancers and the spotlight they use also make it kinda feel like a police interrogation room. Sticking to the washout blue and reds when they do colored lighting gives Junhee's drop move and Byeongkwan's big "swing batter swing" dance a fun uncanny feeling where the shadows take over. Pulling out the blues from the floor and the reds from the cuffs... there's really just four colors in this M/V!
- I don't have the terminology for it but there are a few parts where there's this sideways camera work that I really like. Occasionally when the choreography is asymmetric or processional the camera pulls across in a way that leave parts of the dance and one or two of the guys out of frame and it works well, again adding to that imperfect/off feeling established by the clinical light and the general bloodsoaked vibes. Can't explain more about why this works but it just looks cool man.
- Going back to Junhee's drop move. Junhee is a sweet man who has the capacity to be deeply scary when wearing contact lenses and singing in his high register and I'm glad they're so aware of that. Every M/V should have him doing weird threatening shit for no reason. Let that vampire boy perch.
I still don't know if I actually like the song that much? I'm listening to it a lot but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Peak borderline incoherent word jumble kpop nonsense lyrics with vibes bordering on domestic violence but also they gave the member I find hottest the "you're never gonna take that tone again" line so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not. I don't think it's a vocal showcase for anyone and it's alarmingly WOW-light but they've gone to such lengths with the choreography that I feel like it mostly makes up for it. Lyrics are not what I'm here for, you know? If I want to hear Junhee warble I'll listen to their ballads. But man, this M/V rocks, these outfits rock, the boys are back, Kang Yuchan answer my texts.
Bonus: I don't have many thoughts on Intro: Recuerda, recuerda but I do love that vampire conclave meeting in the sewers bullshit. Do you think they watch What We Do In The Shadows? Kang Yuchan answer my texts!!!!!
