Deconstructing two music videos to identify characteristics of the music video genre.

Bad day

'Bad day' by Daniel Powter is a music video that is narrative based. In this single there is no artist involvement what so ever with the narrative as you can see in the video itself he mostly just plays the piano. The song tells a story about two people that live almost a symmetrical life and shows them having a 'Bad day' clearly showing the audience the song amplifies the scenes shown. The settings used express the way the characters feel about having a bad day. The journey to work shows many people and this could mean that they are just one of thousands of people repeating their boring life. When we look at where they work we see that they are both surrounded with tall buildings and this makes them feel inferior. The body language that the characters show in some parts of the music video tell the audience how frustrated they are. In one of the scenes based on a bus, there's a shot on a young heterosexual couple that are in love but not particularly attractive which leaves the audience thinking why hasn't the main girl found love yet if that couple could, so that shot reflects on the loneliness that girl must be feeling, then there's a consecutive shot of an old couple in love with the woman's arm around her partner. Back to the split scene we see both the main man and woman eating junk food which is often related to 'comfort eating' so this may be a result due to the lack of love in their life. However after they both argued with their bosses they both started to draw and there were split screens at this point. This could symbolize that they are each others other half. Not to mention they work right across from each other. Although the song isn't that fast the editing of the song if fast as there is always new shots every 1-2 seconds.



Shut up and drive

 'Shut up and drive' by Rihanna is a performance based music video where she performs with her band. Rihanna holds a mass part of the music video herself as she is in almost all of the shots. The mise-en-scene in this song is used very effectively as she is wearing cheetah print which matches her wild cat drawing on the back of her leather jacket, this makes her seem fierce and a little bit more dominant. Not to mention that the video features a great contrast in the mise-en-scene between the masculine background of a car garage and Rihanna, dressing and acting relatively sexual and feminine and in contrast to her surroundings, almost as if the garage is a man itself. The close ups and different shots of her almost drag the audiences attention away from the music and make them more concentrated on the video because of her body. The shots are almost the same throughout the video. They just show her face, torso or cut off just above her bum and these shots have nothing to do with the actual song. during the band sequence there is a use of different angles and the way they are moving is very energetic (good body language).