Analysis of Music Videos.

Kodaline - All I want.

This music video is essentially a short story that fits around the message of the song. The video starts before the song starts to play which allows a short introduction to the story about to be told, it denotes a young woman photocopying, giving us the setting of the video. We then hear her scream and begin to laugh, something you would not normally associate together. The music begins as we see the cause of her scream, a work colleague ( we can see this from the costume, a suit) however he has some facial deformities. His expression as another colleague makes out he is some kind of monster shows he is upset and sets up the rest of the video.

As the music goes on the video cuts between shots of him merely working, however it focuses in and out of the foreground and background always revealing a person watching him in disgust. 

The first time we see him smile is when he is watching the young woman from the beginning of the video, the video quick cuts between POV shots of her accompanying the lyrics "I lay in tears in bed all night, alone without you by my side" The song explains his feelings for the woman and this has an effect on the audience as we know she isn't interested. 

When he goes home the mise en scene is dark, hiding his face, this makes him look like any other person and connotes that he is himself when he is alone. The video cuts between clips of him and his dog, showing him happy, then as he sits down we hear "You brought out the best in me" It suggests that he does have someone that loves him, however it saddens the audience as we realise it is in fact only his dog.

The lyrics "Our love was made for movie screens" is accompanied by the him holding a photograph of himself as a baby with what we can assume is his mother overlooking him with a large smile on her face. This is an over the shoulder shot so that even through the way he is sitting as he looks at the photograph we can see he is upset and longs for this love again.

The turning point of the video comes during the bridge of the song, the music builds up as the man builds up the courage to save the woman from some men harassing her. He begins to fight them as the music reaches it's loudest and most intense point. This emphasises how important this moment is and how much courage it took him to do it.

The very end of the video reveals a message, as the woman accepts him asking him to call her, it shows that the way people look isn't everything. 




King Charles - Lady Percy

The music begins as King Charles pulls up and walks into a building. The mise en scene is dull, everything is covered in dust sheets. The lyrics begin with "If you'd agree to be my love, I'd build you a world that fit like a glove" He is holding a painting of a lady and this suggests he is singing these words to her. The cuts are fast and show him dancing on a platform with the painting, almost as if he feels he is dancing with the woman in the painting. The sheets begin to remove themselves and for the first time the camera cuts to another setting, what seems to be outside of the venue and a queue of people waiting to enter, it continues for a while cutting between king charles slowly revealing instruments around him and the people waiting outside slowly entering the building. The music starts to add in more instruments mean while in the video the people previously in the queue begin playing the ones around him. King Charles is still depicted as a lovestruck man singing his heart to a lady we cannot see and the occasional close up of his face mixed with the instruments show his passion. The bridge of the song  
"Raging fires, beseech my soul,
The water of life is drying out slow, 
My soul is burning fiery red, 
Oh take me now, lest I be dead."
are accompanied by shots of King Charles look tired with his fight for Lady Percy. They accompany the shots and show his emotion. The camera during this time is above him showing he is vulnerable to sadness.
The very end of the song shows him stood in the same place as the beginning surround once again by covered instruments as if the whole thing was in his imagination.






Taylor Swift - Safe and Sound
This song was part of the soundtrack to the film The Hunger Games so some of the lyrics are relevant to the storyline. However this video almost creates a separate yet still relevant story.

The video begins with a long shot, this is the establishing shot for one part of the video, an old cabin in the dark however it looks cosy as there is orange light coming through the windows. The scene cuts to to show the source of the light a flickering fire, with two people sat either side, providing a diegetic view of the music source. 

We then get a view of a totally different atmosphere. The shot cuts to an empty field, then to a thorn covered branch. This provides a contrast to the previous cosiness of the cabin as the thorns are harsh and cold.

As Taylor Swift begins to sing the shots vary from long to close up to provide a view of her surroundings which again are empty and cold looking. With Taylor Swift stood in a floaty white dress in such a drab landscape it makes the song almost haunting. The song itself is almost like a lullaby in sound, but the lyrics are like the images quite chilling.

"Don't you dare look out your window darling everything's on fire, the war outside our door keeps raging on" is an example of these lyrics, the scene depicted behind Taylor Swift is a burned out, and some still burning forest making the connection between the song and the lyrics.

On the top of the hill the scene shows Taylor Swift sat on what looks like two tombs, this adds to the ghostly chill in the video. As she reaches the cabin we can see the windows have blackened edges and as she goes inside we see a burned chair. The video cuts between this scene and the scene in the cabin from before where the two people are singing, and it becomes more clear that it is the same cabin, linking the audience between the two singers and the two tombs on the hill and the chilling message "You and I'll be safe and sound" when in fact that was not true.