Through watching this music video, I noticed it was filmed in a narrative style. We can tell this as a viewer because there is a story being shown within the media, the story the music video is showing is of a detective life as he sees the bad aspect of life of the brutal murders. This song’s lyrics compliments the music video perfectly, as the lyrics “this is the rhythm of the night” links to the viewer seeing each night a different murder case. As the rhythm of the night carry’s on within the narrative we see the detective mental health is starting to be affected, we see this within the first minute where the detective goes to the scene, a low angle shot is used to make the detective look powerful, and it’s complimented by the high angle shot, making the victim of the murder look venerable. The next shot sees the detective sit down to her level, which is followed by the dead person talking that compliments the pitchy effect the song has. I see this as the detective is hallucinating this happening, and the lyrics “this is the rhythm of then night” links to what he is thinking at the time.
I really like how we see the change in camera angle placement before seeing, visually the detective is not powerful. The detective going to the same level as the victim. Visually tells the audience that something is up with the detective character. This is something different I noticed from when I watched this music video last time. As the music video progresses, we see through the facial expressions of the actor, and the camera angles of the shots start to change. We see the facials of the character of the detective start to look depressed, a key example of this is at “2:40” where we see the detective looking guilty. I believe this is due to him feeling like he can’t save all the people he seen dead.
When the detective goes to the sink, he looks at the mirror. The representation is used to show that he seems ashamed as the car is driving backwards its used as a metaphor to the audience that everything that is going to be shown is the detective reflecting on his past. We then see a montage of crimes scenes we saw as an audience and other scenes while the dead people sing the song. This is the peak point of the music video where we see the damaged mind of the detective, as after we cut to a shot of the detective who sadly killed himself. The montage of the past is used as a way to show his life flashing before his eyes before he dies.
I believe the humming noise within the first part of the song is a representation of the detectives’ thoughts before he is going to the scene. The humming is the messiness of his thoughts that are loud showing there is an issue with the detective in how he is feeling. This is complimented by the facial expressions from the beginning. The actor shows the detective to be sad and unhappy. This is due to the frown on his face. The facial expression from the actor really helps to tell the audience what he is thinking and feeling. As you can see, he seems to be depressed with the way his life is going. I also noticed the character gets out the car and walks when the beat comes in. I believed they did this because the music kicks in the beat sounds like a pace of someone walking. So the music complimented the visuals on the screen.
The humming noise within the instrumental, sounds like a sort of ringing, as I stated before I believe this to represent the thoughts of the mental health of the character of the detective, I think when creating the theme for the idea the director used the instrumental of this to base the theme on mental health, this is because the instrumental is highly complimented by the visuals. An example of this is when the dead body on the floor we hear the pitched music, with this we see the dead bodies sing this works well with the music and compliments it. Therefore, I believe the director thought deeply in how the instrumentals used would affect what is happening. The sounds used all focus on a main theme that seems to be highlighted through the character of the detective and that is mental health.
When the detective is looking out the window and looking back before he goes to the tragedy. He sees a load of people standing there, who don’t look like they care. This could be how the detective sees the people. As they look like this is normal situation. The people are seen not caring and I believe the reason for this is, this is a representation of how the detective sees people in this mind he sees the negative from all of the bad things he has seen, I believe the nod of the crowd is the beginning nod towards the detective starting to become mentality unstable from what he seen. I believe the director did this for a key reason in suitably showing the deceive views, with this introducing the audience towards the mindset of the detective and how he sees people and what is mentally bothering him.
I also noticed as the detective was looking back in his mind of the previous events one event popped up that the viewer has not scene previously this was a shot of the day and a low angle shot at the detective. I believe this shot was maybe a shot of the detective when he first started. When he was happy. The low angle shot was to show his power and confidence. I believe he may have thought of this moment as he was thinking to when things where ok, before he started to lose control of his mental health. However, I did notice a weakness in the camera work for the detective there was never a high angle shot of the detective to contrast the different state. A high angle shot would have worked well to show the characters vulnerability, and this would also show the character issues, and complimented them. I do think the music video missed their opportunity to add a high angle shot for the detective that it needed to enhance this message to the audience.
Another scene I had found very interesting within the music video is a part where the detective sees the guy from the water starts speaking to him the camera switches to the detective reaction as he is confused in how the guy is speaking to him. I believe this is a representation of the detective having a hallucination because of his bad mental health state. This scene is a key example that shows key theme of the music video, and how we see the journey of the detective mental state get worse the more nights that repeat.
I think this highlights what I believe the director concept for is and that is to show that is anyone could be mentally unstable and you may not know, this is because a detective is a type of character that you would associate these words with and that is, being confident, smart, brave. These character traits that everyone associates the roll of a detective with is what makes the ending so unexpected when we see the mental health of the detective take over and with it his life. I believe the main points that the music video is trying to display to the audience mental health can affect anyone, and they could be the bravest person or the happiest but still sadly have these issues that control how they perceive the world.
Believe the narrative with the story is very sad, this is because when you are watching the music video you follow the characters journey who is the detective. At the start you don’t know how things will end but you follow his routine, however you feel sorry for the character experiences as an audience. As the audiences have watched the journey of the detective the last shot of him dead is very sad as the audience has built a connection with the character as they have viewed the experiences he had to deal with. I believed the music showed and told a story of a theme of mental health. This is due to the detective losing his mind and becoming more depressed of the nights.
As a narrative I believed that this music video did a really good gob in telling the viewers a story without the use of dialogue as you can visually see the story in front of you with the music complimenting the events on screen.
I also noticed this song is meant to be also a love song however the music video does not show that interpretation instead it uses the other lyrics to base the idea of the story. So, I have learnt you don’t have to base the story on all the lyrics for a narrative for it to work, nor do you have to base it on the theme of the song (love). I believe the director had chosen on focusing on the theme of mental health is because it is something at the time when the music video came out (2012), it was not as heavily spoken about, so having a music video that shows a life that many people could relate too. Help spread awareness of the issue and that anyone can get depression and feel this way even if there are known for being brave or happy.
Another reason the director didn't go with the love song music video was because in 2012 there were many different love songs out at that time, with this such high amount of media for this style it was already a saturated place and crowded space to get your music video seen by many, having the music video look different from the pink and romance made the video stand out to a much wider audience as more people were more likely to have watched this music because of it being different and unique at the time.
Shots
In this music video, I noticed there was a heavy use of mid shots and close ups. The close ups were to show the audience the expression of the detective. It helps tell the audience his mood in the scene. The close up on his face has a dramatic effect due to the dark lighting.
The shots would also have camera movements. We see a track shot as we follow the detective to the tragedy. This shot is also filmed in an over the shoulder shot. The over the shoulder shot makes the audience feel like we are walking with the detective to the event. The detective stands out in this shot as a gaussian blur, or a focus blur was used on the foreground so we can only view the decoctive. This helps tell the audience that the detective is the main character. I will definitely try to use this technique in my music video if I do a narrative. This is because it helps the audience understand who the main character is within the music video. The blurred focus helps shift the audience focus to the main points you want them to see. Another movement within the shots of the first tragedy is the camera would zoom in to the face of the victim as they spoke. The zoom I believed was used to show this was a hallucination from the mind of the detective. This shot at the beginning helps make an uneasy feeling, as it helps to create a negative feeling. The position of this frame of this shot also adds to this as the character head is tilted. The lighting on the character at this moment also enhances the unease feeling as the side light is highlighting the right side of her face. This creates a dark shadow on the left side of her face so we can't fully see her full face entirely.
The music video also used low angle shots, to show the authority of the detective. We see this at the beginning when he walks through the door as he looks down at the victim. I believe that even though low angle shot is to show his confidence I don’t believe this shot was used in this way for that purpose. This is because the actor’s expressions on his face, and the contrasted shot after when he sits down on her level. I think the reason the low angle was used was to show the authority of the detective at the scene of the crime before he looks down at the tragedy. When the detective looks down this is where the low angle shot cuts away and then it comes back to him sitting down on a ledge. This I believe shows the detective is not powerful and shows his vulnerable with his emotions. We see the pain within the detective’s eyes as he has seen a rhythm of death each night.
Lighting
The lighting of the music video fitted the tone of the narrative of the detective’s story. The music video hard low-key lighting, this helped to create the atmosphere and tone of the music video and also helped to compliment the characters facial expressions. The lighting was a key element within this music video that helped to create effects. I also noticed that the music video used a chiaroscuro lighting. Chiaroscuro lighting is where, there is a low-key light being used and there is a high contrast being made that creates shadows. We see an example of this at (1.23) in the music video where the victim is on the floor. There is a low-key light creating shadows on the left side of the victims face which is highly contrasted to the right side that is brighter in tone. From watching the music video, I believe I now understand more about how I should use the chiaroscuro lighting technique to create impact within scenes. I believe this effect also helped to make this scene feel unease for audience as the lighting complimented the visual tone of the characters face as well as how the shot is trying to display a message to its audiences.
During the beginning car scene, we see the use of backlighting being used. The backlighting is coming from the headlights of the cars behind this creates a natural glare in the footage that shines up the back of the head of the detective and his body which creates a subtle halo effect. This helps to help push and make the character pop out from the low-key lighting being used. We can also see the streetlights are used to create a natural atmosphere as they light up the detectives face and casts natural shadows on the car. This create a high key light as we can see the detective however there is no direct light on the front of the car, facing the detectives face this is why there is shadows being made on the detective’s face. I believe this helps fit with the tone of the music video. The low-key light is to represent the darkness within the music video itself. In my music video I will try and use the backlight lighting technique to create haloes on my actors to make them stand out too.
Colour grading
The of the night music video uses very cool colours such as blues and a hint of greens. The blues are dark at the beginning foreshadowing the music videos dark tone and sadness. The tones of blue is linked with the theme of sad ness and is used to make the audience feel a sense of this emotion. The dark tone used with this music video has also been used in many films in scenes of grief or a death. The tones are also used in many crimes investigation films this is cause many of the same dark events happen within these shows. I believe the colour pallet of the colour grading fitted perfectly with the whole tone and theme of the music video. It helps to compliment the events that was happening visually as well as the camera movements.
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