Music Video Analysis 2 - Imagine Dragons - Roots

From first watching this music video I noticed that there was a really interesting narrative that ties in with the band themselves. The narrative consists of lead singer, Dan Reynolds, going back to his roots, hence the title of the song. There is a mix between brand new footage filmed of Dan for the purpose of the music video along with home video tapes from when Dan was a child. Some shots of Dan made for the video were filmed to recreate some of the clips of him as a child. These were blended together perfectly due to the use of editing with a graphic match making the editing really clean and smooth.

In terms of the ratio of performance to narrative, I think it is more 75:25 because the only performance shots are the ones of Dan under water singing. I think this could have been better balanced by having some more performance shots, possibly of instruments being played at important moments in the song to illustrate the band and the individual instruments a bit more. We want our music video to be more of a 50:50 ratio of performance and narrative.

I think the narrative itself works really well as it fits in really well with the lyrics to the song and the whole idea of going back to where he came from is recreated in those shots makes the overall effect of the video really interesting.

In terms of the mise-en-scene of the video, costume is kept very casual and natural. There is nothing too extravagant or bold because it is a very down to earth video so it doesn't need anything extreme. In terms of location, there are some really nice outdoor locations used in fields and in front of huge piles of boulders. All of these make for really interesting and unique shots that are really easily achieved with the right location. The framing of each shot particularly in the narrative has been very clearly thought out with focus and depth of field etc. as well as the positioning within the frame, all of which are very important and make each shot even more effective.

 I think there are some quite interesting shots in the narrative however the shot I like the most is the close up shot near the end of the song where Dan is still under the water and there is an overlayed and sped up clip running over the top of his face of all of the different video clips of him as a child seen throughout the video. This is then followed by a slow motion shot of Dan coming up out of the water where the shot goes from black and white to full colour. I think this says a lot about the fact he was in a dream about his childhood and when the colour came back was when his reality of adulthood and fame came back.