Music Video Analysis - (Young Guns - You Are Not)

Artist: Young Guns

Song Title: You Are Not

Length: 4:08

This band is a High Wycombe/London based band that makes alternative rock; they have had ten years on the British rock music scene. I think that this music video doesn’t have to pay that much attention to their image because they have already had ten years active and I think that their image should already been known to regular fans like me – even though the band members are portraying characters.  This bands image has changed gradually from their first album released in 2009, but it has been nothing to dramatic for them to need to make it obvious. Their image has changed gradually because their music has changed from 2009 to the present day, their music is now softer and more melodic and in a way strategic from their songs in the past, and they would have then had to change their image accordingly. As they’re more gothic look wouldn’t match the music that they are making today.

 Genre:

The genre of this music video is alternative rock this is portrayed well throughout this video, as there are rock connotations of heavily tattooed band members. There are many meat shots in this music video of the lead singer, because this video is based around his actions and so therefore would have to be a lot of shots focused him. There are many extreme close-ups of the lead singer in this music video and I think that this can be linked to the narrative as the camera is showing a story and Gustav’s facial expression will aid the role that he is trying to play. I think that for this video all of the members have taken on a role of a different character, as in real life Gustav isn’t a ‘thug’ type of person.

This music video doesn’t show how they are in live performances. This music video is very mellow and mild compared to their stage presence. On stage this band are really energetic but in this music video there is a lot of slow motion and this doesn’t create a real on stage image that Andrew Goodwin’s theory suggests so in this case the theory is not fully supported by this music video.

Narrative:

The music video to this song is very contradictory, as it has no relevance to the lyrics of the song. The lyrics of this song are repetitive and have no words that can illustrate the scenes in the music video. Without the video, you wouldn’t be able to think of the scenes and frames that would match with the lyrics, because there’s no words that create imagery in your head. Having said that, the video that has been created for this song is very good given the fact that there are not many adjectives in this song that can create an image.

 This music video is a continuity narrative as there are no breaks throughout. When I first watched this video I was confused what this video was trying to show, I had to watch it plenty of times to be able to understand. This video is a story played backwards. The events that happen at the beginning, where Gustav gets ran over by a car really happen at the end. This music video then ends with Gustav following a past lover on a train; he can see that she has moved on as she is with another man, this is making the him to act scenes of revenge in the middle. But because this video is backwards you can see how these events are going to end up with Gustav being ran over. I think that this whole video is themed around ‘Karma’ and this shows that everything comes back around with the jealous character being injured at the end.

 I think that this video is unique in its content, as no other bands (to my knowledge) have had music videos like this where the events are displayed backwards. This video doesn’t have any intertextual factors that this band have taken from other existing music videos.

Representation:

I think that there is a lot of star image in this music video, being that all of the band members do portray characters. I think that this is good as it shows that the members feel passion for this song. Other genres of music videos don’t portray this as effectively, because for instance the pop genre music videos are of a faster pace, so I think that it’s harder to feel the passion. I also think that the slow-motion effect that is present in this music video contributes to the emotion in this song because you can fully feel the emotion and facial expressions more clearly as opposed to the faster pace videos.

This video does show the rock band stereotypes; although it does it effectively because these members are playing characters and so they have done correctly in covering up some of the unique features of these people. Such as the beginning of this video we see Gustav in a black leather jacket, this makes him seem and look like an ordinary person, although later after he has acted like a criminal he has a costume change to them reveal tattoos, which is stereotyped to more rough-looking people. I don’t think that this video does encourage behaviour like this because outside of these characters the band members are relatively nice people.  

Audience:

The audience for this particular video differs from anything else that Young Guns have ever done before. I think this because this video includes sensitive scenes that watchers of this video may feel distressed about. This is things such as the use of knives, blood, theft and trespassing. Because of this, I think that their audience’s age is over 15s and because of the image of this band, I think that there is an age cap of under 30s. When viewing this video in other formats such as On Demand they don’t ask for the parental pass code to be able to view. However, if I were to put a cap on this myself this is the age range that I would set.

The character that we follow throughout this video trespassed. He walks through someone’s house; this house belongs to the character that we see in the previous frame. I think that this adds to the video’s effectiveness because it shows the lengths this character is willing to go, to get revenge on another character that later appears to be his ex-girlfriend. As this video shows this character (the ex-girlfriend), I think that this video could show personal relationships, because the lead character that we see all the way through has gotten into some trouble especially with the gang at the beginning. This video doesn’t try to mask any of the explicit content in this video and I think that this is good as more the viewers get more interested in the video to see what happens to the character after he’s done all these criminal acts.

 I think that Young Guns have established that audience already as they have already had several other music videos prior to this one. Because of this, I think that this band knows that they can now include events like this because their certain of the age range their audience is. Earlier on in this bands career, other music video’s haven’t included things like this, other video’s have been mellower and more smoother in content and so I think that this is one of the first video’s that they have released that is the shock factor for the audience.