Kings and Queens Music Video Analysis

 

In the music video, Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars the sounds match the visuals nicely. For example in the first cut we hear an eagles scream, and see an establishing shot of a vast and quiet cityscape. This is a great example of what Andrew Goodwin says about Synaesthesia and ‘seeing the sound’. In other words, this is exactly the type of image that someone would picture in their minds whilst listening to the track. This is accompanied by the music just playing soft, quiet electric sounds to set the atmosphere and lead into building up the song. It is a relatively long take when compared with the rest of the video but is important to contrasting it with the rest of the music.

The first 30 seconds of the song is slow motion visuals, the band are a silhouette to the audience and it is trying to set the whole scene for the music video. The audience would easily picture something like this when listening to the track. After this 30 second period in the video, the band suddenly crash into action with louder guitars, bass, and drums. The visuals are related because they are no longer slow motion, and the silhouettes are replaced with the real detail of cyclists but not yet the band. Further on in the video, the music fits to exactly what you would expect. When the music slows down the visuals slow down, when the music is sped up the visuals speed up. This is very much related to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of Synaesthesia.

The Narrative of the video is about Cyclist running wild throughout the city centre, with a sense of rebellion and free will. There are a lot of wide shots and panning shots following them through the city. There is also a strong star image theme through it. For example Jared Leto (main singer) is right at the front of the band, and crowd of cyclists. The silhouette is a side shot of his face, and you can recognise who it is from his profile.

There is a good structure to the music video. This is most closely related to Todorov and his theory of narrative. There is firstly equilibrium. Everyone is happy free, cycling around a city. Secondly, disequilibrium occurs. A man is hit in the side on his bike. This causes a disturbance and a point to the story. Both the music and the lyrics show recognition toward what has happened. The lyric ‘heaven and hell’ is recognising that this man has had an accident that could be fatal. Next, reparation comes into it with a white horse that somehow fixes the problem and a new equilibrium is made. Michael Shore’s music video theory is all about information overload. He says that it is all about containing male fantasies and having elements in the video to linking to things such as speed, power, girls and wealth. This videos narrative is partly linked to his theory. We have power and speed throughout the whole video. The bikes represent freedom and power as they scale the city without stopping. Michael Shore’s theory can’t really relate to as wide of an audience as Andrew Goodwin’s theory but has elements of synaesthesia in it for example the powerful guitars in this video.

The Cinematography, mise en scene and Editing are used really well throughout the video. When the music is slow the takes are long, and the editing is slow motion. When the music is fast, the editing is a lot smoother and the takes are shorter. The Mise en scene is really well done too. All the cyclists are wearing strange clothes, makeup and are on all different kinds of bikes. This has quite a disjunctive element to the video but could be emphasising the rebellious theme. There are many wide shots, aerial shots and establishing shots throughout the clip giving a sense of scale and the location of where everything and everyone is. Throughout the close ups of the singers face, there is a lot of narrow depth of field used, to get people to concentrate on the ‘star’ of the video. There is also a pull focus that focuses in and out of his face. The editing is a mixture of continuity and montage. The montage editing is mostly at the beginning where there are obvious changes in location matched with the music.

This video has elements of being disjunctive and amplified. I don’t really think that the video is being illustrative. Michael Shore’s theory of music video relates to the things people really want in a video, like power, speed and girls. This video has hardly any of this in an illustrative way. They may be amplified though and the video having some metaphorical elements. For example, the riders on the bikes, symbolising freedom, power and speed. Andrew Goodwin’s theory of Illustrative, Amplified and Disjunctive, fits well with what Michael Shore said about the content of the video. Some disjunctive parts were when there was a white horse in the video. Many people may not know what the relevance is in the video and could mean anything. It is a bit random for what the video is saying and where the location of the injured person is. There are bit of both Entropy and Redundancy in the video too. A good example is of the band playing. You would expect them to have normal clothes on, with normal instruments and a normal structure to the song. This is quite redundant and when people hear the music, they expect to see that, but when we see the band playing on a roof in open air, it seems to be a bit abnormal and entropic. In this video there is no part in the Male Gaze factor of Michael Shore’s theory. There is no reference to women being seen as sexual objects, at all. Michael Shore’s theory is not as powerful and as relevant to Andrew Goodwin’s. Andrew Goodwin has been able to section his theory up to make a lot more sense to what is happening in the video.