Analysing the Editing and Structure of a Music Video – Echosmith, Cool KidsBy Nishat Hossain and Fahad Miah

Right at the beginning of the song, before the lyrics started there was extremely quick cuts of all the members of echosmith by themselves. All of them except the female were featured on the same wooden background, which could imply that the female singer is the group leader or the main one. The cuts were very fast however each character had a close up their face with the same solemn expression, therefore we were able to get a good look at them.

The two different scenes of this music video are also introduced before the lyrics start, however instead of a close up they are shown as a long shot. This helps establish the scene so that the audience can get a good look at the scenery and background. It also allows the audience to see who’s in the shot, and in this case it is all the close ups of the people shown before except in the outdoor scene where there seems to be a few more added people. these cuts are slightly more prolonged as there is more going on in the shot, therefore allowing the audience to see everything.

When the song starts with the lyrics there is a large variety of close up shots available in the performance scene of the singers faces. These close ups seem to emphasize the passion they feel towards the lyrics as we are able to see their facial expressions more clearly. Additionally, this heightens when there is eye contact with the audience while the female singer is singing as it seems as if she is singing to the audience directly.

There is also a few, but not many close up shots in the outdoor scene. Most of them don’t feature amongst the different actors and actresses faces but more towards the naturalistic side e.g. the wildlife.

Whilst watching this music video I realised that the outdoor scenes are cut much more slower than the performance scenes. This may be because once again, there is a lot of scenery shown therefore the slow cuts allow the audience to analyse everything more efficiently.

Additionally, the structure of this music video goes in a order. it starts from the performance scene then goes to the outdoors scene then back to the performance scene and so on. This order is carried on throughout the entire music video which makes it predictable and the audience knows what is coming next.