Blog No.42: Music video analysis (fifth example)

Example: 5

Camera work

Throughout this music video the camera uses hand held shots on the stage and in the audience. This can allow the viewer to feel involved with the band as the camera at 0:27 depicts the audience in the background whereas the singers are positioned at the centre of the frame. Since the camera is mostly shot from the audience's point of view, this can also allow the viewer to be a part of the audience. There are silhouettes of arms, hands and the back of the audience creating both a scenery and feeling of being involved.

Visuals and lyrics

In terms of the illustration of this music video, the name of this song is called "Valerie". When Amy sings "why don't you come on over, Valerie", a number of girls from the audience joins the band and sings on the stage. This could create mystery and curiosity as we may not know who "Valerie" is, whether she was one of the singers or not. However, in terms of contradiction, this video is only set in the stage. At the beginning of the lyrics, Amy sings "well sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water". Although she sings this lyric, the video doesn't depict her outside or near water.

Mise-en-scene

The costumes still relate to the idea of wearing a certain clothing that represents the genre of this music. However, not only does this represent the music genre, but the costumes in this video create a binary opposition between light and darkness. The male musicians were wearing black jackets, ties and hats whereas the female musicians were wearing colourful and casual clothing. The silhouette of the main character could wear a business suit whereas the main character could wear casual clothing. One limitation with this video is that it's all set in one location (stage).

Editing

It doesn't include any cross cutting techniques since this video is set in location. However, at the end of every lyric, the shots change from a number of different perspectives. In other words, the changes of shots and camera angles are similar to the theme of the music.

Narrative

Although this music video is set in one location, there are a few scenes that create a small narrative. Unlike Todorov's narrative theory, the video starts with the band missing a singer. Instead, Ronson choses a random person from the audience to be their lead singer. As the song progresses, so does the number of female audiences singing the song. However, we could include a narrative style in our music video. For example: the character could discover something new, refuses to accept it, feels cursed and then accepts it.

Performance

This video mainly focuses on the performance rather than the narrative. However, it has similar ideas from the first example of our analysed music videos. The original singer of this music is Amy Winehouse but at 1:45 another member from the audience sings the rest of this song, even though it isn't Winehouse. This links to the first example (Happy by Pharrell Williams) where there were both male and female actors singing the song, even though the original singer is male.