Arcade Fire - Black mirror music video analysis.

As the songs starts the lyrics work in sync with the visuals, which can be referenced to Goodwin’s music video theory. “Waking from a nightmare” and then suddenly a monster head appears followed by a man awaking thus linking them together. The effect of this visual allows the audience to feel tense and gives the music video an aspect of horror to it revealing it is likely to have a narrative of a horror story. The music video tends to go against Goodwin’s analysis by not featuring the band and abandoning close up shots. This separates the bands image from the music and conveys they are more interesting in performing than achieving fame.

Goodwin - Lyrics and visuals

Black mirror opens with a long shot and a view of the sea can be seen. The camera then tilts up to reveal a boat which is highlighted by the use of an effect which blacks out the corners, putting the boat in full view, giving an impression the audience is viewing the boat through a telescope. The use of this dark dingy effects has connotations of the past and reflects old footage from the 1940's. Already the video displays the conventions of an indie music video, applying Goodwin’s theory to the video, by using an effect to alter the appearance and atmosphere of the video to make the audience feel they are in the past.

Special effects

Goodwin – Notion of looking

The same fish eyed effect to black the edges is used again to emphasis the notion of looking. This places the audience in a position where they are looking down into the scene through something like a telescope with a limited view, forcing a focus on certain objects. This allows the audience to feel separated from the characters as they are not involved with them and are instead ,in a sense, spying on them.

Costumes From the costume choices of the characters in the video it appears they are dressed to look like they are from a later date preferably the 1940’s. This works in sync with the row boats to give connotations of the war which took place in the 40’s to suggest they are trying to escape it. This could also be why the colour black is used to both make the video look old fashioned and also connoted unhappiness whilst relating to the lyrics of the song “black mirror.”

Mise-en-sceneThe protagonist of the video jumps into the sea and starts swimming towards this giant head from his nightmare which gives an impression that the video is based upon facing your fears. The sight of the head appears extremely unusual and adds to the convention of indie videos being different and unique. The protagonist swims into the mouth and enters an alterative reality which could be him entering into a world of his nightmares as the the first thing he is faced with is a tribe of triangular headed people with pitch forks.

The camera is tilted over the head of the protagonist and is submerged into a cloud of white. Dancers then appear who are performing an in sync dance routine which choreographs with the beat of the song. By dressing these dancers all in the same colour it looks interesting as it disguises them as people and makes them look more like moving shapes than people. This is used as a creative technique and is a convention of the indie genre to use experimentation in music videos.

experimentation