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

"Bad Day" by David Powter is a pop single and has a narrative music video. There is no artist involvement, but there is some performance shots that we see throughout the music video of where Daniel Powter plays the piano. The music video includes some shots with split screens. This is to show the similarities between the two characters and how they mirror each others life of continuously having a bad day. The characters acting is the link between the music video and the song. By the characters acting their miserable days it helps the audience understand the song and distinguish other links in different shots. The mise-en-scene has been thought through carefully in the music video so that it links with the song. Mise-en-scene is made up of five key elements and these are settings and props, costume, body language/facial expression, lighting and colour and the positioning of the characters. 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. The music video is consistent and keeps with the narrative and performance concept so that the audience do not lose their interest and get confused. I think that the narrative scenes in the video are the reason why someone would carry on watching the music video up until the end.  




The music video to Rhianna's "Shut Up And Drive" has a performance based concept where Rhianna performs with her band. The whole video revolves around Rhianna and she remains mostly in the middle of the shots. This shows that she is kind of the pacemaker for the song. 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. There is fast editing with many shots of her singing directly into the camera and the editing is set on the beat of the song. During the band sequence there are many different camera angles used and this is to show how energetic the band are whilst performing. The mise-en-scene used in this sequence is mostly focused on the body language of the band and how they are putting all their energy into the performance. The lighting in the performance is quite dark, but this goes well with the performance because we can see all the band and its almost as if they shine through with their music.