Music Video Research: Killers 'When You Were Young'

In contrast to the two other music video I have analysed, this music video by The Killers, contains a much  wider variety of shots, angles and camera movements. This is because the other two music video were disjunctive and contained no real narrative. Whereas in this video, there is an almost film like narrative that needs this wide variety of cinematography to portray and show the story they are trying to tell.
 It seemed that whenever, the band were shown playing, the shots tended to be medium close ups. Along with the low lighting, this made it seem that they didn't want the whole attention to be centred around them but instead around the narrative.

Whenever the narrative was being shown, the cinematography then became more interesting therefore complimenting the story.

Obviously there is a lot of continuity in this music video because they wanted it to be like a film. There weren't any special transitions because I think they wanted the story to be the most important thing in this video so having any fancy editing techniques would mask the effect they are trying to give. I thinks this connotes that this band want to tell a story with their music and with this music video, they can make the general story of the lyrics and music into a visual narrative through the process of synaesthesia.



The setting of the story is by the looks of it somewhere in south America. The lighting reflects the mood of the story, when the couple are happy, the lighting is bright but when the woman finds out her husband has cheated on her the lighting goes a lot darker.

The setting when the band are playing is fairly plain and you cant see much of it, again connoting that they want the main focus to be on the narrative and not just the bands performance.

There doesn't appear to be any difference between choruses and verses but I think that's because there isn't a lot of change in the actual song between choruses and verses.

The narrative of the video is shown from start to finish, there is even footage playing before the music starts which i think shows how they think the telling of the narrative is very important.

Here the music hasn't even started

I think the image they are trying to present with this video, is that they make music with meaning and a narrative that is worth being told, and not just music that is meaningless and thin.

Overall, this music video is quite literal. This is because the story the lyrics are telling are what's being shown in the video for example, when the song says 'when you were young' it flashes back to the time when the couple are getting married.

However you could say that this music video is amplifying because it doesnt say in the lyrics anything about a couple in south America but they are using this image to 'amplify' the story that is being told by the lryics.