Music video analyses

Guy Pollard

“The

Red

Li

ghtin

g”To begin with we are presented with a woman, which everyone

seems to be terrified of. As she calmly walks into the room

everyone panics and tries to get as far away as possible from

her. We can see that everyone is running away from her

because she is the focal point of the camera, throughout this

whole scene there is not a shot without her which emphasises

her significant. The most prominent aspect of this scene is the

red lighting; the colour red is commonly associated with bad

things such as danger. The red lighting can be associated with

the characters personality, evil and dangerous, hence

everyone is running away from her. If you look closely the

camera and actions of the character are fitting with the tone of

the music. Although Royal Blood are considered a rock band, in

this scene they are in the build are which is fairly calm which is

reflected with the slow and casual cuts with the editing.

“Her

true

na

ture

”As soon as the drums start playing the lighting

changed to blue with the beat. As this scene continues

you will notice the character bobbing to the beat, this

shows the relation with the music to the video as the

music can be ‘catchy’. You will notice that there is

change to the character with the lighting. We can now

see that she is covered in blood and injuries to the

face. this adds depths to the character as it gets the

audience thinking is it her blood and where did it come

from? It is almost like the red is representing society's

perspective on her, where as the blue reveals her true

nature. At this point the music is still building and the

camera shot represents that as it is slow moving and

the colour stays blue.

“The plot thickens”As the building up of the song continues the plot

thickens as we see the characters face on a

caution poster. This is where the called “Figure it

out” becomes quite fitting. This is because both

the audience and the character are trying to

figure out what is going on in the narrative. The

posters confirm the audiences beliefs that this

woman is a danger to society, hence people are

running away from her. The next development is

that what appears to be the security start to

chase our character.

“Defying her place in society”The ‘chase scene’ is in sync with the chorus meaning that

the camera is fast pace and the colour filters are frequently

changing to show the frantic nature of the situation. The

audience are now expecting action from the fast pace shots

and editing. Furthermore if you look closely there is posters

which the camera focuses on during the action sequence.

This reinforces the idea that there is going to be some sort

of fight between our character and the men in white. Now it

is perfectly logical to assume that our character would not

stand a chance against a bunch of burly men. However in

this scene we see her fight back and we are actually able to

see her be dominant over the other sex. This goes against

the normal convention as most people would think that the

men would be the dominant power, this adds more depth to

the character. This idea is backed up by a poster which we

see in the background of a woman beating up a man. Our

character is defying her place in society. Meanwhile the

audience is still trying to figure out who she is.

“The final realisation”At long last the audience can begin to fit the puzzle

of the character together when the final realisation

is made. Throughout the music video our character

had been shrouded in mystery and the assumption

was that she was the villain in the narrative.

However when see stabs the man in white the

story is reviled as we see she is actually a kidnap

victim who is fighting her way out of captivity. As

the filters change we can see that the posters were

actually missing poster. This plot twist will have a

powerful effect on the audience as they realise

they were wrong with their assumption. The bond

with the character is then made stronger.