Monday, 7 December 2009

Texual Analysis of a Music Video 2

Video 2 – The man who can’t be moved: The script


The second video that I will be analysing is ‘The man who can’t be moved’ by the The Script, directed by Marc Klasfeld. The genre of music in the video is Pop/Rock an contains conventions of the genre such as the performance based aspect of the video, the band playing instruments and also the casual laid-back costume worn by the band. There is evidently a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals as the video is performance and narrative based. For example, when it says in the song ‘I’m not moving’ it amplifies the whole meaning and title the song by having a man sitting outside of a shop, refusing to move even though people, even the police are beginning to stare. Another phrase of the song that is echoed by the visuals is when he sings: ‘Maybe I’ll get famous as the man who cant be moved, maybe you’ll see me on the news’. This is emphasised in the video by a camera crew approaching the singer on the floor filming and trying to interview him while we the audience see it from the point of view of people at home watching the news and seeing it on their television screens which is a link to the notion of looking that is common in music videos. The video cuts to the beat and the pace changes at the end of the song (via the visuals). The scenes then speed up and begin to shift quickly between day and night in time laps.

The record company is looking to sell the track as pop/rock, upbeat, mellow, light-hearted etc. and portray the script as the sort of alternative to the generic ‘bubblegum pop’ boy band. The band is being sold as ‘real’, and this emphasises through their songs and videos. The record company wants audiences to be able to relate to them as well as enjoy their music. This seems to be something that the label/record company wants to emphasise, as it seems that the narrative/performance set-up is almost a motif in all of their videos. In the video to their song ‘we cry’ the lead singer again becomes part of the narrative and he is outside outside in the streets, interacting with the public just like he is in this video. The song is also about emotions and feeling pain and struggle. This could be seen as an intertexual reference to the realism – they are showing what’s really going on in the streets.

Overall, the video meets the expectations of the genre as it has performance, instruments and many close-ups of the artists. There are not many intertexual references in the video however; it does refer to people at home through the notion of looking through at TV screen.

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