Analysis of a music video

Let You Go feat. Mali

Chase & Status

2010

I've chosen to analyse this video, Let You Go, by Chase & Status, because on a personal level I enjoy this song very much, but also much inspiration can be taken from it for use in our music video. 

The narrative mimics the life of TV show presenter Jeremy Kyle (in the video it is Patrick Chase) who is hypocritical by telling people how disgusted he is with their problems involving drugs, sex and domestic violence when he does this himself.

It's clear that this music video is dominated by narrative, and it almost feels like the song was written to work in synergy with the background story.  The video is in a disjucture crossed with amplification structure. The disjuncture element to it is that the music has no obvious connection the visuals, however it is the deeper meaning, the amplification, where the link between the music and narrative lies. The lyrics "there's nowhere to run, no place you can go, nowhere you can hide," work with the narrative because it seems like these words are directed at the antagonist as a threat.

A convention from many drum and bass genre music videos is use of lens flares and this has been us to present Patrick with this God-like presence. The blinding white studio light bursts out from behind him, and since the shot is a low angle and close-up we can see that the live audience is in admiration of him and is listening to him as if he's some leader in society. 

The narrative is incredibly ironic and is shameful to the extent that its even laughable. As the track hits the second verse Patrick says "If you can't be good, be honest". He then bows to the audience and as he comes up the shot cuts to him looking up from snorting drugs in his car. From then on we follow his night of activities frowned upon by society (use of recreational drugs and prostitution), even though he says he's "disgusted" by this. Each event is emphasised by the pace of the music and the instruments included. Like when the night kicks off with the prostitute, the shots are much shorter in length and cut to the beat with the energy of the action kept in consideration.

From this video, I can take inspiration for my own music video by considering disjuncture in combination with amplification as a structure, since this it's interesting and the track itself is of a similar format to our chosen song, the Skrillex remix of Promises.