Leningrad- Eksponat

  The music video I chose to analyze is a song called “Eksponat” (Rus. Экспонат), which translates to English as “exhibit” or “piece of art”, by a famous Russian band Leningrad. This video tells us a story of a two-faced gold-digger and the “struggles” she goes through in her hunt for a wealthy husband while laughing at the extreme preparations she is willing to undertake to succeed. This video clip was a huge success in Russia: it reached over 116 million views on youtube, it was on every social media platform for at least a few months, and they were even talking about it on the official news TV channel. Naturally, I found out it would be interesting and insightful to dig a little deeper and see how such a success was made.

By the time “Eksponat” was released in 2015, Leningrad was already a successful and famous band, so the budget for the video was never a problem. The filming took place in a 700m2 studio in Moscow, where the production crew spent 4 days working on the video, the director being Anna Parmas. It is interesting to note, that everything we see in the video, was built and designed specifically for the clip. So, assuming that the crew already had all necessary technical equipment, the cost for the studio and on-location constructions was no less than US$3000, although it was perfectly possible to film in an already existing apartment. Obviously, Leningrad spared no expense to produce a high-quality video, so, naturally, the casting was taken very seriously as well: over 200 girls auditioned for the lead role until Julia Topolitskaya was cast. As for the props, such as makeup, face masks, wax strips, the bicycle simulator, etc., they could all be bough for under US$500, or even borrowed for free. These are all casual things that can be found at almost everyone’s house, but with Leningrad’s tendency for going over the top, there’s no way of knowing.

What makes this work so unique for me, is it’s unusual over-narrative. As discussed in 1st week’s reading, most of the music videos don’t have a narrative at all, or just a hint of it, fearing that a storyline will put a song in the second plan. “Eksponat” however, even interrupts for the characters to say their dialogues, its storyline is unusually distinct. Moreover, this clip exists within comedy movie genre, which is extremely rare for music videos. Maybe that’s why the song was such a success- no one expected to see a story in a music video, especially the one that makes people laugh. I don’t think that anything like that was ever done before in music video industry, so it’s really difficult to say what might have influenced it. As the scriptwriter, Dmitriy Murav’iov said:

“You go outside and observe. It’s the best idea generator. It’s funny because you wouldn’t come up with it on your own”.

V. Elistarov (2016)

All in all, I think that this music video deserves recognition for its originality and boldness. That’s definitely what captured my attention. What I think I can take from it, is an unusual approach to creativity. When I think of “creative”, I imagine something strange, and weird, something you wouldn’t normally think of. But then, every music video tries to be creative so hard, that they end up more or less the same: extravagant costumes, unusual setting, weird lights, setting things on fire, breaking things, etc. etc. “Eksponat’s” creativity, in its turn, is so simple and plain, that no one expects that. Now that’ s truly creative.