Music Video Analysis 1 - Fall Out Boy - Thks fr th Mmrs

From watching this music video for the first time, we noticed straight away that this songs narrative and performance were linked, making it quite an entertaining video. In the video we see monkeys trying to produce the bands video whilst also seeing the shots 'the monkeys supposedly filmed. It has a good balance between narrative and performance which we feel we should make sure we establish in our own videos. This balance is established by alternating performance and narrative, shot by shot.

The idea behind the narrative is quite intriguing with the non-band member characters being primarily monkeys who appear to be running the set of where the video is being 'filmed'. This could presents a message that those who make music videos nowadays are 'monkeys', meaning that they don't know how or what they're doing and that bands are being managed poorly.

In terms of mise-en-scene, the hair and costume of the band is of the style that would be expected of an all male rock band and seems totally in place. The band members all wear dark clothes and even some dark makeup which fits with the image Fall Out Boy often present themselves as. From looking at this video we can get an idea of how costume in the performance is very important to create the bands identity. We will consider how we want our band to be presented when deciding what costume they should be wearing. This is also important for the characters in our narrative as it is essential to correctly present the characters through their dress sense. For example if a character is dressed smart it must suit their personality and role in the narrative. The colour of clothing can also portray the type of character - white can present purity, red can be seductive or sexy and black can show mystery as well as evil.

The camera shots in this music video are particularly interesting as they use a number of different angles and shots. These include tracking shots, mid-shots and close ups, which appear to be the most favoured by the director. From that, I would like to take on board the fact that we must have a good variety of shots and angles whilst conveying the performance and the emotion that any characters / band members show such as happiness in the relationship of the couple, the desperation of the man addicted or expressing an emotion from a band member in relation to the lyrics. It seems to be conventional to included lots of close ups of the singer and using wide shots for the entirety of the band. A clever shot used in this video that tied the narrative and performance together was when there was a shot of the band which had been taking on a dolly as the band were getting closer, it then cut to another shot which was filming the monkeys operating the camera on the dolly filming the shot we had just seen. This created a nice sense of continuity which we will try and re-create in our band footage when we come to film it.