Music Video Analysis

I chose the song Starboy by The Weeknd. This music video has a combination of all three qualities. It is a narrative, it somewhat tells a story and feels like a story is being played out. It is also a performative video too, he is singing his song and basically preforming it. Lastly it is a conceptual music video because there are symbols present within, giving it a deeper meaning. The visual element of color is really used well in the video, it stays dark throughout giving it a heavy feeling, but the key parts that he wants attention brought to are red, like the cross, the car. The lighting in this video is dark until he lights the room on fire the color changes to brighter, which symbolizes him leaving his old life behind and starting a new phase in his life. The rhythm stays the same throughout basically and he stays on beat with it and the scenes stay on beat to it, like when he talks about the car he is actually in it. A key moment in the video is when he kills the old him and starts destroying things in his house. This symbolizes him starting fresh and making a new him. These moments are shown as important because they are brighter and also when he kills his old self there is intense music playing in the background. The camera moves around a lot, mostly to follow him as he walks and drives. It moves a lot because he is the main focus of the video. The video does follow the story of the song, but also reinterprets it too. When hearing the song without the video, you can somewhat understand the meaning, but with the video you can clearly see what the meaning is and also see how he intended it to be interrupted.