Frank Turner - The Way I Tend To Be. Textual Analysis-1

The genre of this music video is Indie Rock. Within this genre we expect certain things, on the indie side of it, you expect acoustic music and the video normally has the singer singing directly into the camera and the rock side of it, there is a build-up and the singers voice in other videos are used louder and shouting more. The video is based around simple things, and that refers to the ideology of the genre, because it is slightly more indie than rock. We expect the cinematography and editing to be fast as it is quite upbeat song. The way Frank is represented is quite indie and his clothes connote this, but it also reinforces his masculinity in this music video. Richard Dyer "How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them. How we see them comes from representation" This applies in this video as he is represented as masculine so we want him to act like a man. He does this by showing anger in the water, throwing a chair and his guitar. We also wouldn't expect him to be wearing a suit so the fact he has baggy clothing on reinforces the conventions of an Indie Rock music video. The cinematography what we see first is an establishing shot, from this we see a chair and the location which the video is going to be based, secondly we see an over the shoulder shot, from this we can see where is he and also we get a glimpse of what he might be carrying over his other shoulder. Depth of field is also used since we in the foreground we can see him but he is blurry but the background is clear. This draws the focus onto the sea and the beach. After this we see a low angle used, all we can see is his bottom part of his body and he is walking down towards the sea, this could refer to the mood which he is in and the fact that the weather isn’t very good could also reinforce this. The first close up we get of his face and he is looking down and isn’t looking directly into the camera, therefore that also reinforces my last point. We get another over the shoulder shot which is exactly the same as the first one, this suggests that they want to show that they are still walking towards the sea and you can also get a glimpse at the weather and how glum it looks. when frank is directly singing towards the camera this is when he looks a lot more happier, this is reinforced by the cinematography because they have used a medium close up, so we can see the emotion on his face but we can still see that the mise en scene around him doesn't look as positive. As we get further into the song, we see a long shot which includes him dragging a chair which has left marks in the sand but also the black clouds are reinforcing the mood. The cinematography here could represent him being on his own. When the chorus is played in the song, we are focusing alot on the sea and his feet since it is getting more uplifted. Throughout the song we can see different shots of him walking down the beach, the fact that he doesnt take up much of the framing suggests that he isnt a dominant person. the most dominant object which is in the framing is either the sea, or the castle which is shown in the screen shot below.

 

From this screen shot we can look at the Mise en Scene. Within this we can see his costume; he is wearing a black waist coat which could represent his mood this is also shown as he has his head down too. The fact that he has a waist coat on, white shirt and smart trousers but that they are looking scruffy might suggest that he has had plans but they didn’t turn up. From this we can see that he doesn't look like he cares, this is reinforced by my previous point but also by the way he has the guitar slung over his shoulder and how he is dragging the chair across the floor rather than carrying it. Fourthly throughout the video we can see in certain shoots that the weather isn’t good. This is also reinforced by the mise-en-scene because we see the sea which is bashing against his legs and the chair which he is sat on, also by the plants in the background when we have a close up of him singing, we can see the wind is hitting the plants which is causing them to move alot and lastly we see the wind which is moving his hair around. The fact that it seems to be quite fast would suggest that they are in the chorus. Towards the end of the music video from the mise en scene we can see that the lighting is starting to get brighter but also we can see the horizon of the sea which could suggest happiness and uplifting. He walks into the sea as well, but still holding the guitar, because of the use of mise en scene we can see that he has gone from not caring to being more involved and since he is playing the guitar rather than having it slung over his should would represent that he is happier.

Lastly for the Editing and Sound, at the beginning of the song the edits are very slow because this is to reinforce the mood and since this song has a climax then it would need to start off at a low point. The fact that the song starts of too means that the two go along together better. As the chorus starts to pick up the first time, we still only have slow cuts as there isn’t much movement within the recording, but the second time around the cuts are much faster because we see the artist sat down but leg movements look quite fast and the weather seems to be aggressive compared to the beginning. Lastly at the end we see the edits are fast and cut to go on to little snip its of props which are flying about and the artist us up and walking about. The song has reached its climax by this point and the 4 key elements reinforce this.