Music Video Theory - Steve Archer's Theory

Steve Archer's Theory

• There needs to be a strong and coherent relationship between narrative and performance in music promos
• Music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band
• A carefully choreographed dance might be part of the artist's performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the 'repeatablility' factor

The video opens with an establishing panning shot of the frontman of the band.
It pans forwards and goes past him.

The shots of the band members playing their instruments are very well shot.
The band member is very tight in the frame and the handheld camera works effectively,
the shakiness going with the aggressiveness and fast pace of the song 

There are so many cuts in this video that it is impossible to count. A shot lasts no longer on screen than a few seconds. I find that the editing is fantastic and makes the video memorable. 

Throughout the music video each band member is on screen for a fairly equal amount of time.
Some bands only focus on one or two of the members but this promo has the whole band alot of the time
with the frontman being the main interest at times.



The narrative is shot in slow motion for the majority of the time. It splits the performance and also adds more to the video.





The narrative amplifies the lyrics as the narrative shows a group of men acting violent to an uknown enemy.
The lyrics 'Fuck the law, we wrote the order, fuck the bridge because we built the border' are amplified by the men acting as they don't have any concern for the law and are doing what they want.