Music Video Analysis

I have never really thought of music videos as films that could be analyzed but they definitely are. Music videos can make or break a song. There have been times where I don't like a song but after watching the music video I find myself changing my mind. The reverse is also true. I have loved a song and had it ruined by the music video. It doesn't match the image I have running in my head and from then on the official video that I didn't like is all I can see. I also didn't know many of the terms that go along with analyzing films. Shot, editing, focus, genre and scene were all pretty self explanatory but auteur, diegesis and mise-en-scene were foreign ideas to me. After learning that auteur is french for author that one made more sense but there is more to it. It is the ideas the author puts into it. In music videos it isn't always the artist. It can be the director. Diegesis is the subtle things everyone sees but doesn't really see. Symbols in the video and angles of the camera show the audience the story without explaining it. It makes the whole video more emotional. Mise-en-scene is not just a word a can't pronounce but a story put into one shot. At any given point of a video there can be a mise-en-scene. Like the diegesis, the symbols in the background make up the mise-en-scene. The details can tell a whole story without any words or movement.

I presented Already Gone by Sugarland this Friday. I had to look through a lot of videos until I found one that I liked and had everything I needed. Already Gone had very obvious and simple symbols but that's what I wanted. I don't quite get what I'm supposed to be looking for in videos but I needed to start somewhere. In school we are taught what to look for in books and I can find metaphors in lyrics. Finding metaphors and symbols in videos is a whole different story. The new medium is harder. Like many novels, the symbols are subtle and can be hard to find. I'm excited to see where it goes. I've never thought of taking a film class but so far I like it.