Analyse 5 Music Videos by Jonas Åkerlund.

Edward Young 13BCU

Duran Duran – ‘Girl Panic!’

• Duran Duran's ‘Girl Panic!’ is a very unusual video. It is a nine minute long video of narrative through a fake ‘making of’ video. All the members of Duran Duran are portrayed as and played by women, all famous supermodels (Naomi Campbell (as lead singer Simon Le Bon), Helena Christensen (Roger Taylor), Eva Herzigova (Nick Rhodes), Cindy Crawford (John Taylor) and Yasmin Le Bon) who have been given the pop star ego of Duran Duran.

• The video is shot at the Savoy hotel in London to give it this sense of glamour. I think they have used supermodels to portray themselves to show off this lifestyle that they have without using themselves and looking very full of themselves and help make it seem more like a fictional video. This whole feeling of glamour was used to portray the songs meaning which is the effect that girls have on the members of the band.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMbOuNBV0s

U2 – ‘Beautiful Day’

• Throughout this video there is a lot of light and white. The very opening of the video just a very fast forwarded weather change, showing the dark and dull clouds leaving and bringing out a glimpse of sunlight and blue sky. This works well throughout the video as the music is very pleasant and in a major key, making it a feel-good song.

• As well as the clouds moving away to reveal blue sky and sunlight, we see the lead singer of the band, Bono, acting as a fictional version of himself walking down a road that is very quiet (symbolising the feeling of solitude when you feel that you have lost it all), occasionally chasing after cars, trying to hitchhike, wearing glamourous clothes of his look in the past of his rock star career so far, looking very worn out and rundown. He’s throwing what little money he has left around etc. This symbolises that his career has hit rock bottom. As the video progresses we see him walking around an airport enjoying himself e.g. When he feels the kindness in woman when he eats her apple and she lets him take it from her and they both smile. This all symbolises the songs meaning about loosing everything and yet still finding joy in what little you have left, the constant white light helps to establish that more.

• At points through the video, we also see all of the band together, carrying their instruments around the airport and performing in two different places, one of which is a stage (which is used through most of the video), and the other is on the airport runway with planes flying over the top of them and the band full of energy (particularly Bono as he’s been telling you the story throughout the video, so the audience will be more drawn towards him), symboling the spirit, joy, and energy of the song rising as the song comes to its final chorus, middle 8th and outro. During the final part of the outro we see the fictional version of Bono running down the runway alone, running towards the light, the runway symbolising the long road to happiness in the darkest of times, the fact that he’s alone expresses the point of loosing everything and feeling alone, yet he’s running towards the light, and on the way we see another plane take off and he jumps in the air with joy, his spirit in the air.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6WMzDOh1o

The Rolling Stones – ‘Doom and Gloom’• This song was released on a greatest hits album to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the band. So throughout the

video we see the band rehearsing for their 50th anniversary tour, most of the shots being in black and white to represent the milestone and how they’ve been around for a while. The video also kicks off with a woman sleeping underneath a big lit up rolling stones logo (promoting the band). The other half of the video is all about the woman who Mick Jagger is supposedly singing to, a woman who only sees the dark and depressing side to everything and is having nightmares throughout the video. The song’s meaning is about the frontman Mick Jagger “always hearing doom and gloom from a girl, so lets go out and party!”.

• So the video constantly shows quick shots of things that are being televised on the news, all the dark parts of life like war, nuke strikes, death, murder, plane crashes etc. The woman is shown to look very down and stood in a dark space all the time, giving her a gothic edge. She is dressed in scrappy clothes that are dirty and worn out.

• The locations are also cleverly used to show places where nobody would like to be e.g. Under a bridge on a motorway, in a really horribly cheap, dull-lit, and messy apartment etc.

• The high tempo of the song is portrayed well throughout the video, often doing very quick shots between different scenes that Mick Jagger is singing about. The shots also often switch on the timing of the tempo or chord change.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DWiB7ZuLvI&safe=active

Robbie Williams – ‘Come Undone’

• This video interestingly uses very dynamic colours, whilst the main character in the video (Robbie Williams) is seen wearing black in his performance scenes, these scenes represent the way he feels inside about the lifestyle he lives. This whole video seems to have a theme of melancholy to it until the end of the video where he seems to be enjoying himself much more.

• The video goes through “The Morning After” of living in a lifestyle like his, having parties all night in his expensive home, drinking all day, having sex with gorgeous strangers etc. and shows the darker side to it and why he feels compelled against it. The dynamic colours show how full of life they are and how much they want you to love them, however Robbie is shown to be in a bad mood against them.

• As the video comes to a close, we see a very uncanny merge between the good and bad of his memories that evening, but show to be mainly good, the colours are all bright and attractive to the eye, showing that deep down he really does love his lifestyle, despite his regrets.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D35vfQ7eZg

Coldplay – ‘Magic’

• This music video has been chosen to be played in the form of a silent movie, opening with an interesting title sequence, shot entirely in black and white, and using the occasional subtitle for speech in the middle of the screen after you’ve seen the characters open their mouths. I think that this is an interesting approach as it is very rarely shown in music videos. It keeps the video simple, but the story is shown to be about a complicated relationship. The black and white resembles the contrast of dark and light in the story, for example, there are shots of the woman's face (who Coldplay's frontman Chris Martin has fallen in love with) where she's standing on stage next to her assistant (Chris Martin) and although she’s putting on a smile, we see an over-the-shoulder shot of Chris looking at her bruised arm, showing that she is being abused by her husband. The colour in this shot focuses on keeping it dark, the highlighted parts of the shot are in a greyish colour so that we can see its significant to the characters story whilst showing us that it’s a dark part of her life. Another example is when we see Chris looking at her, she usually is shown to have a very light face, this shows that she is important, innocent, and pure through his eyes.

• The background tends to be darker in most scenes as it is not important at all, and because they try to focus only on the characters throughout the video.

• I also enjoy how they’ve combined the story and performance, not using performance very often, only in the parts when its important, like when Chris has learnt to fly and the woman falls in love with him.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtb11P1FWnc&safe=active