Music Video Film Study Continued

This past week our SLCC class continued to analyze different genres of music videos that contain the ten main elements that make up a quality film. These ten elements include Auteur, Diegesis, Editing, Flashback/Flashforward, Focus, Genre, Mise-en-scene, story/plot, scene/sequence, and shot. Within the 3 Door's Down music video, Away From the Sun, diegesis was very prominent. It was easily assumed that with the video starting out with a sunrise that that signified the beginning of life and the person climbing the mountain was climbing the mountain of life. He was weighed down by boulders that symbolized life's struggles and when he reached the top of the mountain he lived his whole life and it ended with a sunset. The flashbacks that were incorporated in this video displayed the common struggles such as bullies and they were shown at different parts on the mountain just like how these struggles only show up at certain parts in a lifetime. The Mise en scene was also very well illustrated in this video as it was shown at the ending when the person made it to the top of the mountain and the sun was setting. That shot really added intensity and significance to the emotion of life.

The next well done music video was My Name is by Eminem. This video held a lot of significance and symbolism. The editing was well done in this film by the way the scene switched and it was made to look like Eminem's "life" or struggles were a t.v. show that the "audience" or everyone else surrounding Eminem's life was watching. Therefore this film is a narrative as Eminem is the one telling his story. The focus that really popped out to me was in the beginning when the "audience" turned on the t.v. to watch Eminem's show and it was backlit on the people watching and this is to show that it isn't determined who is watching because people are constantly coming and going in his life. The scenes in this video emphasized on what affected Eminem the most in his life and how they have made him a bad person but a good one because his music is where he deals with his experiences.