Music Video Analysis (Narrative)

J Cole- She knows
The video's narrative portrays struggles with infidelity. It’s a pretty straight forward issue, but Cole puts a little twist on that by portraying it from a child's perspective rather than the man who has been cheated on or the woman who has cheated. It also portrays the narrative of a troubled young boy; his struggle's at home have caused him to result to alcohol and drugs, and get in trouble with the police. The lighting throughout the video is quite dull and dark which reflects the mood of the video. Symbolic techniques are used also; for example the boys facial expressions and actions after he see's his mother, it causes him to result to violence. Symbolic technique is a typical convention of a music video to highlight it's meaning. It follows a story line; a young boy steals from his parents to skip school and have fun with his friend, "she knows" is both the title of the song and consistent lyric used throughout the song, again linking to the struggles off infidelity and the effect it has on others. This video follows a linear story line, it has a beginning middle and end. Even though "she knows", nothing is said and everything carries on as if things are normal. The camera movements are at a normal pace which reflects the 'realness' of the video. In the middle of the day the teen is surprised to walk in on his mother and another man at home. That man, of course, happens to be J. Cole. No words are exchanged in the moment and needless to say, dinner was pretty awkward that night. Narrative video's often use a normal pace and simple camera angles to again highlight the realness to the situation, and make it simple to understand. 

Royal Blood- Figure it out
The songs genre is hard rock, post grunge and "garage" rock. The music holds both a closed and open text because as the video progresses, more is shown to the audience. "Figure it out", ironically the plot of the music video. It holds an open narrative as we the girl as a criminal because of the crime she has committed; murder. However the narrative is closed in terms of the audience do not know what she did till the end of the music video, where in fact she is not the only criminal. The two tone colour overlays highlight a transformation of 2 worlds/ perspectives, the 'basic reality' or what everyone see's, and then what the girl sees and whats actually happened. This is typical of a narrative music video, there is a closed meaning behind it. The girl in fact was kidnapped, and therefore we have to figure out why she was missing. There is a use of flashback- where the girl remembers escaping the van, which cuts back to the tension of her real time action. (continuing of action.) This is where the video begins ' to turn the tables' in what the audience see the truth of what happened to the female actor. Continuity editing is also used, it smoothly joins the two visions together to create a confusion of reality which we can believe in even though it doesn't make sense in understanding it, we can visually see there are two sides to the conflict. This is highlighted in the colour overlays; red and blue, calm and angry.