Music Video Analysis 3 - 30 Seconds to Mars - The Kill

This video has been regarded as the greatest rock music video of all time by MTV's VMA rewards. As the it begins, the video has a small prologue before the music starts and the audience discover that the band are on their way to a hotel for a short getaway.  Near the start of the video there is an establishing shot showing the hotel and the area surrounding it.  The hotel is clearly gloomy and is in an open area with no signs of civilisation.  This instantly sets the dark tone for the narrative of the video.
        
The scene moves to the inside of the hotel and the scene is full of wide shots to show the size of the rooms which are extremely large. However, it also emphasises the vast space in the rooms, highlighting the recurring theme of emptiness in the video.

After this, the music then starts, and by following the usual convention of music videos,  the first line of the song is a performance shot, showing Jared Letto singing. It is a close-up on his face to get his emotion across to the audience. The mise en scene used with Jared's makeup is incredible as he has dark circles around his eyes to once again infer the darkness of the song.  It also makes him seem emotionless which ties in with the emptiness represented throughout the video.
        
The music video has a cool 50/50 of narrative to performance shots.  They are spaced equally throughout the video which is the classic convention of a music video.  This is done to keep up the feeling of the genre as well as tangle the audience in the story presented by the narrative.
        
Each character of the band is faced with a double of themselves throughout the video.  I think this has been done to show that the meaning of the narrative is to find out who you really are, or in other words, to find yourself.  This would link with the fact that the hotel is completely empty apart from the band members.  To show that they don't know who they really are and they feel empty inside because of this.

          

Once the characters have faced themselves ad experienced some kind of conflict and confrontation.  There is a scene where they are all partying and dancing in the main hall of the hotel with many other people.  This proves the meaning of the narrative.  Once they have found themselves they are no longer alone and no longer feel empty.  To show this the director has used a master shot to show all the characters as well as hundreds of extras all dancing together.  This shot is used as it changes the vibe of the video.  There are now hundreds of happy people as opposed to the loneliness that was represented beforehand.