Music video analysis - 2

1.       Pompeii -  Bastille

Mise-en-scene:

Locations: Rooftop, abandoned building, dark empty streets, shop, Arcade, Mountains, River,

Due to the destroyed streets we can interpret that this song and music video is about how Pompeii was destroyed by clouds of toxic gas and hot volcanic ash in 79AD. If people in Pompeii had taken the warning and moved away they would have been saved from the devastation of 79AD, but they didn’t, they rebuilt on the rubble of the same situation. Similarly in our lives we often don’t take the warnings of potential devastation from our “vices” (our personality and characteristics equivalent to the underlying volcanic activity of Pompeii) and build on the same rubble (staying in the same life situation) while continuing our potentially destructive behaviour (our ‘sins’) the way to save ourselves is to take the warnings and move away, sometimes in a metaphorical sense or actually changing the way we live our life.

One of the most powerful lines of the song “where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?” in other words do we just clean up and hide our messes or do we dig for the root of the problem first? It seems to suggest that the first option will lead to continued failure and an endless cycle of destruction.

Props: Bike, drink

Clothing: Black t-shirt, brown leather jacket, black skinny jeans, and black trainers.

All the clothing of the other characters are quite dark and dull colours, fits with the theme of a sense of darkness in people lives and their thoughts.

Camera:

Establishing shot of man on rooftop, zooms into him to show how we as the audience are going to learn about this characters story of their dark thoughts.

Long shot of man walking down multiple flights of stairs, it shows how he is about to embark his journey and so are the audience.

Multiple long shots of the destroyed streets, this allows the audience to establish the setting and get more of an idea of the meaning of the song and music video.

Panning shot of man on his bike, this is showing how the character is travelling through the streets of Pompeii after the devastation and is trying to figure out how to pick up the ‘rubble’ of the city and his life.

There are a lot of tacking shots that give the feel that the audience is following behind the character and watching his journey happen before them

The camera becomes very rough when the character is running and it is like the audience are running away with him when he is running in the music video.

Editing:

Quick cuts from the narrative and the artists singing.

Lip syncing to the song

Sound:

Bastille singing Pompeii

At the beginning there is a diegetic sound of the wind. It is quite a calming noise, it could represent the calm before the storm.

Theories:

Todorovs narrative theory states how all narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another. This theory does not link to this music video as there was no equilibrium clear at the end of the music video or song, there was no solution. The disequilibrium is the volcanic activity of 79AD and the deeper meaning of people deciding between ‘rubble’ or our ‘sins.’