For my music video analysis I have decided to analyse the video 'Breezeblocks' by alt-j. I have chose this song as it fits in with the genre I am researching on.
The song starts off quite quiet for the first few seconds until the drum beat kicks in. The beat and pace of the song is shown through the straight cut editing (one of Andrew Goodwin's theories of 'Thought Beats') and the smoother more calm, non-instrumental parts of the song are amplified in a less-violent way (e.g. the woman running away from the man in slow motion at 0:35 seconds). The video has three main actors who we presume are a couple but who seem to be having an argument over another woman who appears later on in the video. The lyrics of the song also reflect upon the visual and what we see ("Never kisses all you ever send are fullstops"). The way the video is in reverse, similar to The Scientist by Coldplay, also gives the video a eccentric touch and makes the video jerky and not as simple to understand compared to music videos with a relationship/love theme with a easy to read narrative structure.
The mise-en-scene and colours used in this video are overall quite dull and dark, mainly greys, blacks and dark blues, which could reflect the problems that the couples are facing as the reality of the situation is low spirited and hurting. The idea of 'breezeblocks' links in with the idea of the couple trying to build and improve their unbalanced relationship. The video also uses breezeblocks as props as a way of symbolizing the violence in the relationship. It could also symbolise their feelings towards eachother with the idea that there is parts 'missing' and 'empty' (the holes in the breezeblocks).The facial expressions, such as an aggressive gritting of teeth, angry mid-shouting and guilty head-in-hands, of the man and woman also tell us a lot about how they're feeling, especially as there is no lip syncing in the video so the audience will have to rely on the lyrics properly to understand the storyline (e.g. 'please don't go/I love you so' - he does truly love her and regrets killing her). The camera angles and shots are interesting as the couple never look directly at the camera as they are too involved in the violence and argument. The camera is sometimes placed in discreet places, e.g. low angles are used and there is sometimes something partly blocking the cameras view like a table, which makes the audience feel as if we are secretly watching in on the argument when we aren't meant to be as arguments are usually about personal things.
The narrative of the video is readable, yet the narrative before and after what is shown is confusing (why was the woman being kept under the wardrobe with tape over her mouth? Was he cheating on his wife with another woman because of the frequent cutaway edits to his gold wedding ring on his finger?). These missing parts of the story make the audience want to keep watching the video and make them want to find out what happens to the man; does he end up getting arrested after the murder? Is the girl really dead? This supports Torode's theory of the 5 stages of a music video/film, although in this video not all stages as we do not fully understand the reasons for the beginning and the end.
Because the narrative is reversed the future is shown in the beginning, where we see the male with his head in his hands looking very guilty and in regret. The camera then cuts to the female character, who is under the water in the bath, along with a breezeblock.
From the media language we presume he has gone too far in the argument and ended up killing her by throwing the breezeblock at her and knocking her unconscience, which is an enigma and key object in the video as the breezeblock represents more than one thing.
Although this conclusion to the argument may not always happen in everyday life, normal people can relate to this type of violent argument which makes the music video quite realistic and eye-opening, and alt-j may be trying to bring attention and get a message across on the topic of domestic violence in the world today. This is also known as representation and Carole Vernallis' theory states that people are more aware of situations when they are realistic and happen in the culture we live in. In this case, domestic violence is a key problem in the UK that needs to be tackled, and alt-j try to make the public more aware of the problem with their music video.
Alt-j are not present in the video and instead their video is being acted out by the two girls and man. This means that there is no star image as we do not actually know what alt-j look like, but this is one of their debut singles and they are a new band, therefore we might find out more about them as time goes on and they release more.Their other popular song 'Tesselate' is played on BBC Radio 1 more and more frequently and their presence at this year's music festivals continues to help them on gaining their popularity.
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