A2 Advanced Portfolio: Music Video Analysis

Example Kickstarts

He can't decide whether hes a singer in the pop scene or a underground rapper, so example has decided to put them both together with this song, Kickstarts, his first massive hit that has received millions of views on Youtube.

It follows the narrative of the song about the on and of relationship that every couple faces and has been cleverly directed and edited to show this.

The lyrics and visuals are consistent throughout and the video has a good mix of literally showing the lyrics and the narrative and subtle hints about what they are talking about, here are some of my favorite examples:

The lyric "Go to talk then we choke it's like our necks in a noose"

Spaghetti is usually connected with love and a couple on a date, but here it is used in a twist. It has been shaped into a noose, suggesting that that is where their love is heading. I like this because it has taken something quite cliched, and turned into something relevant and visually interesting.

The Lyric, "Start to think it could be fizzling out"

This is not a lyric that has been forced in front of your eyes and has been shown literally. Its a suggestion at the lyric, Fizzling. Like their love is fizzling out, so is the Drink, Its fizzling up.

The Lyric, "You get bored and I get cold feet"

This is maybe a bit more of a literal lyric and visual connection but just as interesting. Its obvious that bare feet on tiles will give you cold feet, but it is used a metaphor.

From this i have learnt that there are many ways you can make a connection between lyrics and visuals.

The next Section i am going to address is the relationship between the music and visuals. As this video is more concept and narrative based, we don't see things that we do in a performance based video, like Instruments. The artist does mime the lyrics throughout which i will go into more deatail about when talking about the close up of the artist.

The links i can see between the music and visuals are show in my TubeChop example below.

Here we see that the artist is tapping his foot in time with the beat and this is then added to by other actors, getting more and more as the beat gets faster and hits its climax.

Throughout the video there is close ups of the artist and it has been cleverly edited to show Example in as many shots as possible. The way this has been done is very good because when watching it a few times you don't realise he is in every shot, but you still feel the desired affect that this is his promotional video, to his song, off his album. What is also clear and an occurring theme in Example's music videos, since launching his pop career, is that he is the actor playing the part in the main narration. This then enforces how the video is showing the story of the song.

Here we also see another promotional plug for the artist as his logo has been added to fit in with the video in the first few seconds.

The genre of the song is pop and i think that the video reflects this perfectly. Its colorful and full follows a narrative which is more likely to be seen in Pop videos as appose to rock and Hip-hop.

Overall this is one of my favorite music videos as it is visually enjoyable to watch. I also think is shows many elements of Goodwin's theory of music video analysis.

They way this video has been directed and edited is something that i will take as inspiration when it comes to creating my own music video.

I like the way they have used many images in the split screen mode that shows that it can be related to many people. I also like the way they have used the split screen to show the artist miming while telling the story of the lyrics on the other side of the screen.

Looking at the whole media campaign of this single, there is a link in style in the video, album cover an promotional poster.