PW - Technical Analysis - The Streets 'When You Wasn't Famous'

A technical analysis of The Streets 'When You Wasn't Famous'




For my technical analysis of a music video, I thought that this video would be most appropriate to use. Reasons for this is because it is in the same genre of music as Jamie T. Furthermore, the video has a lot of narrative based performance as well as performance based which is what we were looking to do for our own music video. I analysed the whole video which was a total of 147 shots. It was time consuming but well worth the effort to fully analyse this video as it would greatly benefit me for when it comes to me producing my own music video. The video is not very fast paced, most of the shots are around 2-3 seconds long which compared to other music videos is relatively slow. However, it all depends on the genre of music because dance songs can have shots as quick as 1 second and then pop or RnB songs can have shots as long as 4 or 5 seconds. The rap/Indie/Hip hop genre falls in between the two with shots at an average of 2-3 seconds, however this can variate. There was a high percentage of shots which featured the lead singer, I think this was done so to keep the focus of the audience on him. Also, the narrative of the song was all about him and his personal issues so it was important to portray him as the main character of the narrative.
Camera movement is incorporated to create pace by using handicam shots throughout the video, this ensures that the camera is always moving which helps to keep the consumers attention. The main shots that were used were close ups, this is the 'meat' of every music video and was shown significantly in this music video as you can see the shot reverse shot of every action the main singer does when he interacts with other characters.
Another point that I noticed was how the shot duration increases to 3 or 4 after a long run of 1-2 second shots. This is particularly shown when the location is changed. In this music video the lead singer is seen singing in his narrative based performance through a number of close up shots which have a high cutting rate. Then just before the location is changed the length of cut is increased so to slow down the pace of the video. This sequence occurs at 2:21 where he is lying in bed underneath his covers and the shot continues for 5 seconds. It occurs again at 2:50 when he looks at sings at the camera whilst he is walking for 5 seconds. It also indicates the end of turn of that location.
At the start of the music video, it is a very dull moment as the car arrives, which is reinforced by the slow cutting rate, but as the lead singer who is the main character in the video steps out of the car the cutting rate soon begins to increase over time. By doing this it keeps the rhythm of the music video going and grabs the consumers attention by leaving it as a story which is unfolding. The first 20 shots of the video change dramatically. It starts from a 7 second mid shot to a 4 second close up, to a 4 second long shot followed by 5 more shots which on average are similar in length, however this long cutting rate decreases to only 2-3 second shots which are then carried on in the music video. This has been done to create an effect of pace which increases throughout the video. The same effect is used towards the end of the music video as the shot lengths are increased slightly to slow down the pace and bring the music video to an end.

Here is a link to this music video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm3fPCJ4DQY