Star Analysis- Analysing Progression of Music Videos

Muse’s first music videos were very obviously made with a low budget, as they were not yet well known and did not have the money to spend on eccentric videos, and were very simplistic. This can clearly be seen in ‘Sunburn’.
 Sunburn was one of the singles from their first album, ‘Showbiz’. The video has a very simple household setting with a mother watching television with her son. She walks up stairs and looks at herself in the mirror, and sees the band in the mirror. This is very basic editing but is still quite effective. However one can tell that the actress is not very good, which shows that their budget is low. They still manage to portray the meaning of the lyrics through the video, as the actress ends up finding herself stuck in the mirror. As one of the band members states; “it’s about moving into a new world, mentally or physically, realising its not what you thought it was going to be”.
 It still clearly shows that the band had a small budget, making it rather low production, but they still managed to make it an effective video.

 

One of their later videos, ‘Undisclosed Desires’, from the album ‘The Resistance’, clearly shows higher production. This means that the band has become more successful and therefore can afford better music videos.
This video was set in, what seems to be, a small warehouse. The area is surrounded by screens showing the song’s lyrics word by word. They are often not in time and occasionally playing some other part of the song. This creates an interesting background to the scene. They have lots of shots of a dancer, often in slow motion, where she appears to be covered in wires. This fits with the theme, as the entire set is covered in wires, speakers and instruments and lights that lie on the floor, which light up according to the beat. It gives the impression of seeing the band ‘behind the scenes’, as the audience sees what is usually hidden in videos, such as the wires, hanging frames saying where each shot is and describing the shot type, eg. Matt Close Up. One can also see tracks on the floor, which are being used as dollies, which are commonly used for filming track shots. There are also several shots of mechanical items and images which relate to hearts or blood, which link to the lyrics.
Overall, the video has improved greatly in production, creating a video which is fun and easy to watch, both for its simplicity, its interesting camera shots and because of everything that’s going on; for example the fast paced editing allows the audience many shots of moving speakers, the dancer and the band, so the audience is constantly entertained.

 
‘Reapers’ is one of their most recent songs, from their album ‘Drones’ which came out in 2015.
This video is clearly of higher quality- the production in this video is much higher than any other, with CGI drones and better editing. This album was based around the control of the government and the story of someone trying to escape their hold. ‘Reapers’ expresses the characters losing battle as he eventually stops running, the last shots showing him lying on the floor, completely spent as the drone flies away, having subdued the enemy.
 The woman in the video is the antagonist who is controlling the drones, chasing the man through he set. The entire video is in black and white, however the text appears as red, as does the woman’s lipstick and nail varnish- this clearly sets her up as the antagonist as red represents danger.
The shots through the eyes of the drone are seen in negative with a frame and a target, as they chase the protagonist through the abandoned buildings, which shows the drones intent of stopping the protagonist through any means necessary.
 The lyrics also appear providing key words or phrases of the songs to make it clear to the audience what they are trying to express, for example phrases such as ‘rule with lies and deceit’, ‘kill remote control’, ‘Hellfire’, ‘killed by’ and ‘brutalise’ easily portray the drones (and the government) as the cold and heartless antagonist of the story. They then later repeat the words ‘here come the Drones’, which gives the audience a sense of foreboding as the Drones give chase and eventually win against the protagonist.
 These subtle editing techniques help to win the audience’s attention. This is using the ‘Hypodermic Syringe Theory’, which suggests people are suggestable and will be influenced by what they see on the media. These suggestions manipulate the audience in to knowing who the antagonist is by clever use of words and colour.

This clearly shows the progression of Muse’s music videos, both through production and ability to create an interesting video.
At the beginning, they had a small budget, with a very typical, unexciting video, that had a very basic storyline and with a rather simple meaning that was expressed very fundamentally.
 Through the years, we can see their improved fame, allowing them a larger budget, so they can become more expressive in their music video to help portray the meaning of the song and to pull in a larger audience, as many people enjoy watching music videos. With the money they have, they can afford a better production team to create a higher quality media piece, using expensive equipment to create better angles and more interesting shots. They can improve the editing of the video to make it more realistic and eye-grabbing. Over time they became more inventive with the use of editing in their music videos, especially with ‘Sing for Absolution’, where the band was edited into a spaceship that flew into space through an asteroid belt and crash landed onto an abandoned planet. This immediately drew the attention of audiences, as it shows what the future could be and how we need to conserve the planet we live on, as they represent the idea of humans destroying the planet as we see debris around the planet and advertisements preparing the people for the ice age. The astronauts then land on the abandoned planet to find a ruin of big ben, as they realise they had already destroyed the previous planet.
 From this you can see how effective music videos can be in representing the idea behind the song. Muse mostly use their videos to help teach their audience about conspiracy theories and their beliefs about the Government and what the future could hold for us.