Analysis of Music Videos

The music videos that i have chosen to analysis :-
1) Crying Lightning - Arctic Monkeys
2) The day I Died - Just Jack

1) To start off with, the arctic monkeys are trying to create a whole new image for themselves by becoming more of a indie rock band than the pop type image that they started out with in their first two albums.
The video starts with strange colouring in the clouds as well as a strange font showing the name of the track 'Crying Lightning'. It gives the impression of something like an old fashioned ghost story. Then the font turns into fog or cloud as the camera tilts up into a long shot to show the band in a boat in the middle of an ocean.
At the start of the song, the music is quite slow and calm. This is also the case in the water. It is very calm and still to start with. But as the song gets into the first chorus with the words, 'Your past times...' the colours in the cloud turn red indicate that the storm and the song are going to get heavier. Also, during the first chorus, the drummer is beating on the snare drum and after very 2 beats there is a change in camera shot. These shots go around all members of the band showing the audience their faces and what they look like.
As the 2nd verse kicks in, the close up, birds eye view shot shows that it has started to rain. This also indicates that the storm and song are being to get heavier. The sea also gets notably rougher and the waves get bigger and start crashing against the boat.there is also a laps or shifting of time where the background goes from day time to night time. This could show the audience that the band have been on this boat for a while and be lost at sea or something similar. As the guitar solo starts and the track really starts to kick in, lightning in the cloud starts in reference to the song name. Also, large figure of the band rise up from the water wearing sunglasses. This is another image editor. They want to be seen as cooler and probably a little more mysterious than the images they have portrayed in the past.
Referring to Andrew Goodwin's theroies of distingishing a music video as a form, I think that the visuals are amplifying the lyrics because of the lighting in the sky towards the end of the song again relating back to the name of the track. Apart from this, there is no real concrete link from the visuals to the lyrics.

2) The first thing that anybody will notice is that James Nesbitt is the main role in this video. This is completely unexpected and gives a little extra surprise to the fans. It can be linked to the song, 'Weapon of Choice' by Fatboy Slim that features Christopher Walken dancing around an empty hotel.
Another immediate thing that i noticed was that that the whole video is narrative and tells the story of this man going through his everyday routine of going to work.At the beginning where he is eating breakfast at the table with his children, i saw that the children blinked in time with the music as well as moving things like the toy cars on the table. This was also done in tempo. There is also a shot a toy ambulance linking to the end of the video. The costume is strange because he is in clothes that are ripped and dirty as well as blood on his head. Like he has already been run over. I thought this may be him reliving the best part of his life before he dies. Like the saying 'Your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die.'
As this is a typical, daily routine of man going to work, this means that the audience can relate to what he is going through. While walking down the street when the chorus is playing, the shot changes in ever 2 bars to give a different perspective on what he is doing and his facial expressions. (He is always smiling).
My favourite piece of camerawork in this video is when there is a man painting on the pavement. James Nesbitt stands on top of the painting of the globe as the saying suggests, 'On top of the world'. This also gives us an indication of how the character is feeling. The high angle shot aslo make it seem like he is standing on top of the world! This could tell us how he is feeling even if we were not listening to the lyrics. This video is defiantly illustrating the lyrics of the song again relating to the theories of Goodwin. And it is so narrative is unbelievable.
Lighting turns grey when he starts to die. It has turned form fantastic sunshine, (all the way through the video) to looking like its going to rain extremely hard. And it does when the doctor, played by Just Jack pronounces James Nesbitt dead.