Wednesday 6 April 2011

Arctic Monkeys - Leave Before The Light Come On Video analysis



Leave Before The lights Come On, is a narrative video telling us the story of a women who thrives off of attention and affection, who gets this by convincing men she is going to commit suicide. The main man seen in the video is her target and when he finally realises that killing herself isn't her only intention he sees sense and tells her to go away, after which she returns to the same spot we see her at the start in a fit of rage as if she is going to kill herself as she looks for her next victim, and the cycle starts again.

Arctic Monkeys often create videos which have nothing to do with the song which is in fact quite common of the Indie genre however the subject matter is quite peculiar. In this video none of the band appears in the video at any time which isn't un-heard of but it is fairly unconventional. In most narrative videos one of the band members normally
appears even if it is just for a short while.

They make no delays in introducing our main characters as they both appear in the first 10 seconds; we see the main man walking casually down a high-street in dark clothing and under dark lighting, yet we see the "suicidal" girl dressed in bright col
ours above him which is quite ironic seeing as she is the one who is a
t rock bottom and about to jump of a building.

Next we see a mid shot of a shoe falling from the sky in front of the man and as he grabs it and looks up he sees the young girl about to jump from the roof and he runs in desperation to save her so at this stage we think that we have one suicidal girl and o
ne man who is about to save her.

Once she has been saved by the hero (or as it later appears, the
victim) we are taken to a much less depressing scene, we are in a cafe with bright colours to represent how the girl now feels. She begins to flirt and her
facial expressions tell us that she is much happier and starting to fall for this man, however she also think that he likes her even though he is a married man and is just trying to cheer her up because she was upset. This is statement on an issue that many teenage boys may have actually been through with unstable teenage girls which isn't normally commented on in music because it is quite a delicate subject but the band feels that this issue has to be addressed to the public becau
se it is actually very common and can be very stressful for both parties. One can only assume that a similar kind of story has happened to one of the band members.

It feels more like a short story as opposed to a mus
ic video because there is very little variation in shot types and the narrative is in real time (almost) instead of jumping about all over the place like alot of videos which is actually typical of this genre. It is making sure that the main focus is the narrative and not the song itself. Its is also shown to be a story because there is no "on the beat" cutting, it looks more as if it may have been edited without even having the track there.

Then the atmosphere starts turn into something darker as the man realises that the girl is mental and has issues with obsession. He gives her plenty of warning
to go away until he has to forcefully tell her to go away. The cutting rate speeds up as the action builds however this change doesn't occur in the music which once again implies that this is more of a drama with a soundtrack. After the fact that he didn't want anything to do with gi
rl kicked in, she hits another state of depression and we see her running on the roof of the same building we first saw her. It looks as if she is about to jump b
ut then stops, looks down, and the story has gone back on itself as we see her how she started off in the video. It is now apparent that this girl is just an attention seeker and probably won't kill herself because she knows that there will always be fresh victims for her to suck affection from.
This video uses very little conventions seen in most music videos but uses alot of the conventions that Arctic Monkeys use in their videos. "Fake Tales Of Sanfransico"
is a very good example of another video of theirs which is in a very similar style. The only difference being the story line itself. Personally if I was making a music video for this song it wouldn
t be anything like that as think that seeing the band is quite important in a music video. However it does strongly demonstrate a common issue which isn't brought up enough in society which is partly what indie music is all about.


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