Reflection Week 4/28- Music Videos

     There were a lot of interesting videos this week in class. There were a lot of videos that surprised me with their depth and meaning and that fit the terms very well. The music video Stan by Eminem beautifully exemplified a lot of the terms. Looking at Eminem as the auteur, he wrote the song about a true fan of his. It was based on real events that he experienced being a famous artist. For the diegesis, the viewer can infer that Eminem can see aspects of himself in Stan. At 5:50 the viewer sees Eminem as he is writing the letter to Stan and realizing what he has done. His reflection flashes in the window and we can interpret this as Eminem looking inside himself and recognizing the similarities between himself and Stan and how easily he could have wound up in the same situation. This video also has many flashbacks of Stan's life and his path to losing it.
     The second video that stood out to me was I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift. The genre is narrative because it tells the story of her past relationship. The plot is that she always knew she was putting herself into a bad situation but she could't help herself. Despite knowing she would get hurt, she wanted to do it anyway. A good example of scene/sequence is throughout the video it flashes back and forth between her memories of her relationship and her current situation. It depicts how thrilling her life was when she was in a relationship versus how barren and lost her life is without it and allows the viewer to feel how intense those memories are for her.
     The music video American Soldier by Toby Keith has great editing to convey meaning. A lot of the editing makes the viewer feel compassionate. The subject of the video is in the military for are country. The editing allows us to see his home life, his family and such and then will show us him putting on his game face to go to war and leave his family. A great shot in this video is at 2:37, when the soldiers are walking on to the plane. It shows them all as dark shadows meaning they are the faceless soldiers of the military. They are also walking into the darkness and the back is full of light, showing the darkness and horrors they are about to face.
     The music video for Hey Brother by Avicii has a great example of Mise-en-Scene. At 9 seconds into the video, there is a medium shot of the front tire of a boy's bike. There is a picture in the spokes of the tire which is the focus of the shot. Also, the colors in the shot are red, white, and blue. This infers that there is longing for a someone who went into the war. It is patriotic and the photo is a way of representing the boy's longing for his family member in the war.