This textual analysis is of Rooftops, by Lost Prophets. I am researching this video as the meaning of the song is about overcoming oppression and releasing angst and emotion, from a teenage perspective. Hence, this is an emotional narrative and video, and so ties in to the genre of the video we are planning to create.
I have also chosen Lost prophets to research as they are a British band, and because of this I can compare the nature of the video to American music videos. The similarities and differences between American and British Emo music and music videos is an interesting and important issue which will be fully explained in a future post.
The video starts with the band, who are on a helipad at night time. The significance of the helipad is that it is on the rooftop, reflecting the song, and is also a stylistic, well lit location. There are still shots of each member of the band, fading in and out of focus. These show the viewer each member of the band, each looking at the camera. The band shots break up the narrative, and tend to be either handheld or dolly shots, expressing the sense of movement in this sequence. In these shots the band are moving around a lot, expressing emotion through jumping, swinging hair around and suchlike, similar to many videos of this genre. The majority of the band are dressed in black, reflecting the stylistic nature of the Emo genre. The singer is dressed in a white jacket, in complete contrast to the other band members. This contrast highlights the singer as he as the frontman, and the role of the frontman in emo music (arguably) is to represent the emotion of the song, and sometimes the narrative. The role of the frontman in Emo music videos is another issue which will be discussed in a future post.
The narrative follows three teenagers, all fashion-wise following the emo genre conventions, in some way being oppressed by authority, for example parents or boss. The first narrative we see is at a table, where a middle class family is having dinner, the mother and the father arguing over the dinner table. These shots are in slow motion to emphasise the sense of drama and anger, as well as the girl's helplessness within the situation. She is sat between them, caught in the crossfire of their argument, and it is clear that emotion is boiling up inside her. How she is dressed reflects the emo genre conventions, and is in contrast to how her parents are dressed. Perhaps this contrast in dress relates to the differences between their social situations, that her parents fit in to the middle class suburban stereotype, whereas her dress reflects her inner emotions.
The next narrative is in the back of a car, presumably his dad's. He is also dressed in an 'emo' style, wearing a black t-shirt, bleached hair and wearing eyeliner. His dad is dressed in a suit, also reflecting and representing the modern day world. His dad is shouting at him, and like the first narrative his dad's voice is muted, so we feel a sense of isolation from this 'adult' world as an audience, as the 'narrator' does. The teenager is trying to ignore the shouts from his dad, as of the first narrative, trying to avoid conflict.
The following narrative is of, once again, a teenager who stylistically is following the emo genre conventions. He is working in a restaurant in the kitchen, has long hair and 'snakebite' piercings, also wearing an apron. He puts a plate of food on the worktop, but it is obvious that his boss is not happy with it as he is shouting and pointing across the kitchen at him. The teenager looks blankly at him, hiding the pain inside.
These narratives are broken up by band shots. The chorus lyrics are 'standing on the rooftops everybody scream your heart out' and it's as if these lyrics are directed at the characters in the narratives.
These characters finally get the message in a sense after the bridge, in which the singer is singing 'scream your heart out'. At this stage in the video, the video's protagonists start screaming, breaking all the glass and plates around them. This is in slow motion to emphasise the movement, and infer the turnaround of emotion, and of these narrators releasing their bottled up emotion.
The band shots are filmed with a low aperture lens; this is obvious as:
A) The shots are in low lighting (on a helipad at night), and so a low aperture lens would be necessary to capture these.
B) The shots fade in and out of focus often, and are of a really shallow depth of field. This shallow depth of field is a side effect of a low aperture lens. We would seek to do shallow depth of field shots in our production, as these give a great cinematic effect.
All together, this video is a great example of an 'emo' music video, with three strong narratives instead of one, to infer how this suffering goes on everywhere unnoticed. It uses cinematography very well, combining dolly, crane and handheld shots, as well as cinematic low aperture shots. These cinematic aspects I would like to carry through to our own production, although I would prefer to focus on one narrative to make it more immersive.
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