Analysis of Student Music Video - Crawl

At the start of this student music video there are different quotes that are on the screen that are from different political figures of the past. At the start it says 'Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past' this was quoted by George Orwell a political figure in the English socialist party Ingsoc. Then there is a quote by Winston Churchill former prime minister saying 'the empires of the future are the empires of the mind' and the last quote was by Eleanor Roosevelt saying 'the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams'. These quotes link to the lyrics of the song and the narrative because they are all talking about the future and some talk about the past and in the song the lyrics say 'So where do we go from here, with all this fear in our eyes, and where Can love take us now, we've been so far down, we can still touch the sky' and in this verse it mentions the future, present and past.

The camera used in the music video seems to be controlled most of the video without shaking too much and most of the time the framing is good. The student has thought about what they want to be in the framing and which includes mainly different locations of London such as the River Thames, graffiti wall, different bridges with views of central London behind it, St Pauls cathedral and included London red buses in some shots. This is to emphasise the location of this video being in London. To ensure the video had many different locations this music video is also filmed in someone's house at the beginning of the music video which also makes the narrative of the music video more believable because the character is not always just going to be wondering round London.

Although the framing of the music video is good for the most part there are some lighting problems particularly at the beginning of the music video. This makes some of the shots very dark and hard to see. This is something that the group could improve on next time if they were to film this again. It is helpful seeing this so that I can really think abut lighting when making my own music video.

There are a variety of different shots used within this music video including extreme close ups, close ups, long shots and mid shots. This is good because it gives the music video variety however, there are quite a lot of long shots showing the main character in the music video who dancing. Although the actor is very good at dancing some of the dance moves are not relevant to the song choice and do not suit the narrative which is about love as it is street dance but there are some moves that suit the song for example when he crawls on the floor (as the song is called crawl).

There are some intertextual references in this music video as there is a whole section of dancing where the character dresses and dances like Michael Jackson. The dancing is good and the costume has been thought about well in this part of the music video however again I do not see where this links into the music video as the narrative of the video appears to be that his girlfriend cheated on him and he caught here with this other man at the river.

At this point when he has found his girlfriend with another boy the character and the boy have a fight. This fight is highly unrealistic and it is obvious that the two actors aren't actually hurting each other at all. This makes the video a little bit funny and takes away from the serious storyline and lyrics used within the music video. The lip syncing in the music video is good for the most part, the actor is mainly in sync and also looks like he could potentially be the artist who sings this song.

The editing in the music video is jumpy at points where they have used two takes and tried to make it look like one take where the camera has slightly changed position in the second shot. However for the most part the editing is quite good and the music video runs quite smoothly. There are sometimes transitions used for example at 1m 32s there is a transition to change the location which looks good but for the majority of the music video there are just cuts from shot to shot. To show past events that have happened these clips are filmed in black and white. This works quite well as it is then clearer to the audience what is the past and what is the present in the music video.

Mise en scene has been thought about for the majority of the music video as well for example the costumes and the locations as it quite a believe narrative but at the very beginning where the actor is in his room getting ready to go out, he is in a pink bedroom with pink curtains. Although some boys may choose to have a pink bedroom stereotypically this is not the case and more girls have pink rooms and the media generally use stereotypes therefore it appears that maybe the students just used one of the girls rooms whose project it is and didn't think about every little detail. This is useful because when I do my music video I will ensure I pay close attention to detail and ensure that even small thing in the music video is realistic.



By analysing this student film it will be helpful when creating my music video because the aspects I like I can think about using in my video for example trying to use loads of locations but it will also help me because the things that they could have improved on I can ensure I don't do in my music video. For example I will make sure that there is not an unrealistic fight or dancing that does not really fit the song.