Music Video Analysis 5 - Twenty One Pilots - Stressed Out

This music video to the Twenty One Pilots song 'Stressed Out' has very little narrative and is mainly performance. It follows singer Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun mixing both narrative and performance into one. However it is more a conceptual idea than it is a narrative. The idea the two are showing is how they are still living in their youth almost, they are living like they are younger and being told they need to grow up by their family. You could interpret it as their mockery of the adult world and choosing to not live by society's rules. When we produce our music video we will not do something like this and will have two very separate performance and narratives.

The video starts with a tracking shot acting as an establishing shot to set the scene before the action starts. It then quickly changes to a mid shot after the main performer cycles onto the screen. There is a lot of shaky hand shots used withing the video which links to the idea that they are trying to present that life does not have to be perfect and it can be a bit rough. It is likely that we will use a lot of shaky hand held camera footage during the filming of the narrative as it connects to our story line of being under the influence of drugs and alcohol. It will put the viewers eyes in the world of the drug abuser.

Red is used throughout the video in contrast to everything else being black and white. It separates them from everyone else and shows the audience that there is something different about them. That difference being that they don't want to conform to anything and want to be free to do and say as they please. This is especially apparent near the end with the contrast of them in red and their families in black telling them 'Wake up you need to make money." We are also going to use red in our video but to show temptation and lust for something bad. It will be contrasted with white when we want our character to be pure but also with black to show darkness and bad decisions.   

The video doesn't use too many clever shots, a lot of them are just basic close ups, establishing shots, two shots and wide shots. This has made us realise that as crucial as all these shots are, to make our video stand out we need to use some clever and striking shots and angles which really takes advantage of lighting, position within the frame, props and colour. We want our video to look professional and hit with an impact which 'Stressed Out' doesn't quite do. When filming we will ensure that we use a range of filming techniques to create an effective video.