Saturday, 14 June 2014

Analysis of Music Videos #4: It's My Life - Bon Jovi


Song : It’s My Life
Artist : Bon Jovi
Director : Wayne Isham

Genre Characteristics:
A male around his teenage years lives with his family (mum is heard) and while opening a live footage video on his (old from the 90’s) computer, he gets a call from his friend, saying he is missing a show. So he leaves the house quickly, going through numerous amount of ‘challenges’ and is solved through ‘action’ acts such as jumping from a height, running on vehicles, rolling under trucks while its moving. The friend and Bon Jovi singing the song is seen throughout the video.

What is the relationship between lyrics and visuals? :
Key Lyrics is shown in the visuals such as ‘departed’ as the male character is leaving the apartment in an intense way. ‘Now or Never’, he does something that he wouldn’t normally do. Its clever how they edited to have things that the boy would’ve never of done while Bon Jovi sings ‘It’s My Life’.

What is the relationship between music and visuals? :
As the music speeds up in the chorus, the chorus parts have faster edited cuts to match the spirit of the music. The spirit of the music is upbeat and fast which represents the ‘It’s My Life’ message to do with the song and therefore having a faster edited cuts correlates with the music and visuals.

Are there close-ups of the artist and star image motifs:
A lot of the close-ups are of Bon Jovi when he is singing in the concert especially when it comes to the chorus. Maybe representing that it’s his life and he did what he wanted to do with it and it got him to great extents.

Is there reference to the notion of looking? :
There maybe a small reference to the start and end where you see the computers as they are older than what they are now but maybe not be as relevant to the music video itself.

Are there intertextual references? :
There are no main intertextual references.

Is it performance-based, narrative-based, concept-based? How much for each?
It is performance and narrative based as you see the male character 

No comments:

Post a Comment