Analysing, Example - Last Ones Standing

The music video for Example's 'Last Ones Standing' is a disjuctured narrative, as the video tells a story, but there is no relation between the lyrics/music and story.  However there are elements to the video which relate the lyrics and music together but not explicitly as an amplification or illustrative music video would do.





In this first clip there is a relationship between the music and the visuals where we see quick cuts of different pictures, made to look like photographs, of the car and the artist in his car and they move in a continuous way as if the camera man has taken multiple shots in a row quickly and fitted them together.  The music we hear is multiple chimes which are quite loud and sharp and they come in everytime a new photo is shown to show good continuity.  This also emphasises the importance of the car and who is in it as it already has siren on top of it so we know its a detective's car, and so with the car being accompanied by the music we can see that this car and driver is an important part of the story.







In this second clip, there is another relationship between the music and the visuals.  This is where, as the main part of the chorus starts, the music from the chorus becomes louder and more up beat, and the visuals we see at this point is the characters in the story who are police, are chasing the criminals.  This allows them both to go wel with each other as you would expect some up beat music to be heard when watching a chase scene to add tension and exitement and this  happens in the first and second chorus and so shows good continuity throughout the video for both the chorus and story.



In this clip there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. Where when it says 'Were on the run', the visuals we see are of the artists running, which then quickly cuts into a shot of them running down a set of stairs, and then again into a long shot of them chasing criminals on a bridge. This illustrates to the audience the fact that they are running, however the way it is sung could mean that the singer is the criminal, as being on the run wouldn't neccessarily mean your chasing someone rather than being the one who is being chased and so the roles of the artists singing are different to their characters in the story.






In this clip, the main artist is shown with closeups however, in other music videos the main artist is shown through closeups every 5 to 10 seconds, but because this has a story to it, the main artist is not shown with alot of closeups. To aid this though, we are able to understand who the main artist is, from him being the boss of the other detectives in the police station, also the fact that he is the only one who is lip syncing lets us know straight the way that he is the main artist.





from this video i have learnt that having the visuals as a story which relates very little to the music and lyrics, can be just as good as one that does.  This is because the story draws in the viewer and they want to see what happens, and they can do this at the same time as listening to the song, so there is 2 elements of entertainment, whereas in other music videos which don't really have a story, the viewer is just watching the artist lip syncing most of the lyrics and maybe there isn't alot going on in the background.  This can help us in our music video as we could consider that having a story could get a better audience.