Music video analysis - 2

The second music video I'm going to analyse is Love Me Like You Do by Ellie Goulding. This music video is a hybrid, it's a narrative and a performance music video.




Mise-en-scene: For the duration of the music video, Ellie Goulding only changes clothing twice. The characters in the Fifty Shades Of Grey clips have frequent clothing changes as the scenes that we are shown are all different. In the clips we are shown of Ellie, we don't see many props except the chandelier. They don't do anything with it except dance around it. In the Fifty Shades Of Grey clips, we see many different props depending on the setting they are in. The location in which Ellie is in changes twice: one of the settings is a large castle like building with large, expensive sculptures and the other is in an empty car park. Much like the clothing in Fifty Shades Of Grey, the settings alter depending on the scene that is being shown. Some of the locations are at a workplace, at a home or on top of a building. The lighting is first very dark as the song opens and the lack of lighting adds atmosphere and mood to the song but as soon as Ellie enters the large with the chandelier, the lighting gets brighter and we can see the location better. The new lighting could suggest how the singer is feeling as she gets a lot happier. The lighting in the empty car park is quite low which adds mystery to the feel of the song. We see close ups to Ellie's face and the lighting is very high and we can see almost every detail of her face, the change in lighting could, again, fit her mood.

Angles/shots: There aren't a varied use of shots in the music video. A common shot that I noticed was a tracking shot. The camera followed Ellie around the location and it followed her when she was dancing. Another shot that was used a lot in the music video was an establishing shot. The establishing shot sets up the context of the music video by showing the relationship between the character and the location. A close up was used of Ellie's face. The close up exaggerates facial expressions which convey emotion. The viewer is drawn into the subject's personal space and shares their feelings. A lot of the shots we see are cut very fast and it's apparent when the song picks up. However, angle wise we see three types of angles. We see the most common: low and high angle. But we also see a birds eye view. We see this when a manly figure is looking down at the large room with the chandelier.

Editing: Some of the shots were edited in slow motion. The reason behind this is because it captures key moments. Another editing technique used is fast motion. This was used when Ellie was dancing with a male. A lot of the dance shots were sped up.

Theories: The obvious theory used in this music video is Intertextuality. As the song is for the Fifty Shades Of Grey soundtrack, clips from the film were incorporated in the music video. This also links with one of Goodwin's points: there is often intertextual reference which can contribute to the postmodernism of music videos.