Music Video Analysis - Mr Brightside, The Killers

Mr Brightside - The Killers

This video isn’t narrative and instead focuses almost entirely on the artist and band singing with different effects on them. What caught my eye about the video is that it’s in black and white, an idea I’m toying with when it comes to my own music video.

The video is shot in a dark room where each of the band members is lit by a spotlight. 

This creates a really interesting effect of playing in the dark but still being able to see each of the people; it also links to the title of the song, Mr Brightside.

It begins with mid-shots of the musicians where the camera slowly pans across them so the shots aren’t too static. 

The first guitarist shown has a lot of light on him and looks overexposed, this will have been a deliberate decision to make the video imperfect and slightly more gritty to appeal to the style of music and the audience it holds. 

There is then a panning shot to reveal the singer who appears in the right hand third of the screen however, the camera continues to move causing him to appear in the centre of the shot before returning to the right hand third. 

This, again, adds to the more rugged effect of the video and keeps up with the pacing of the song which has quite a fast beat. 

There is a flare of light in the centre of the screen which further adds to this effect and exaggerates the lead singer as we’re seeing him for the first time. 

He is lip-synching the song, giving the illusion that it is being played live by the band as the video clearly centres around all of them and their performance, rather than creating a story. 

We then have a cutaway to an extreme close-up of his face where an effect has been added almost like an x-ray. 

This is used repeatedly throughout the video to add some variation otherwise the video could become too repetitive. 

We return to the original shot of the singer for him to finish his verse before returning to shots of the band, drawing attention to each of their instruments as they become evident in the music, for example, we get a low angle close-up shot of the drummer as the symbols get louder and faster in the song. 

This helps guide the viewer’s ear to things that may ordinarily be overlooked and helps emphasise all the intricacies and layers to the music. 

For the rest of this verse we alternate between mid-shots of the singer and close-ups of the instruments and musicians. 

However, the effect is used again on the singer to help break up this section and make it more interesting; this variation is emphasised by him walking backwards, turning his mid-shot into a long-shot to change up what we’re seeing on screen. 

This shot is also treated as a cutaway as, when it’s over, we return to the original mid-shot we were seeing before. 

We then cut to another close-up of the drums before we head into another section of the song. This music changed is displayed in the video through the use of slightly longer shots. We get a 6 second shot of the singer with very minimal camera movement, emphasising the slightly slower pace the music has adopted. 

We the cut to a shot of the guitarist, however, instead of this being a short glimpse as we’ve been getting previously, this is a more extended shot - 5 seconds of purely the guitarist. The camera pans up his body, initially focussing on the guitar before moving up to his face. 

However, there is more movement in this shot as the man is stepping from side to side and the camerawork is handheld, giving it more motion. This is reflecting how the words of the song have slowed down but the music is maintaining it’s faster pace. 

We then cut to a shot of the guitarist and the drummer with the guitarist in the foreground and left hand third and the drummer is in the background in the right hand third. 

They’ve also used a shallow depth of field to put the guitarist in focus and the drummer out. This creates an interesting shot for the viewer that has more depth to it than simply close-ups of the band. There’s another brief use of the x-ray effect on this shot before it cuts back to a mid-shot of the singer where the camera slowly pans around him, taking him from the centre of the shot to the right hand third. 

There’s then an extreme close-up of half of his face which is very short and just adds a varied shot type to keep the video moving and interesting before we reach the chorus. 

At build up to the chorus the previous effect has been added to a mid-shot of the singer as well as a stop-motion animation effect which makes his movements appear incredibly jerky and disjointed. 

This same effect is added to the guitarist and drummer separately as they appear in the centre of the screen as well, causing each member to blur into the next rather than having the distinction between each previously created in the video. 

This creates an almost surreal effect and increases the pace of the video in preparation for the chorus. It also adds to the edgy, disjointed feel that is common within the rock genre of music videos. 

When we reach the chorus we see a very short close-up of a shadow of symbols against a creamy wall followed by a shadow of the singer before we cut back to a wide shot where we can see silhouettes of the singer and drummer ad lights being shone to create huge shadows of them across the wall.

We then focus back on the singer with a mid-shot of his silhouette holding the microphone before cutting back to the set up we’ve seen in the rest of the video but with the inverted colours effect on it making it appear different to how we remembered. 

We can see the singer in the foreground with the two guitarists in the mid-ground and the drummer right in the background. This allows us to see all of the band in one shot, producing the music we can hear. 

We then cut back to the silhouette shot, with a master shot of the singer and the drummer which is referred back to after each of the close-ups on the instruments and singer individually. 

This is followed by a very short shot of the guitarist in the stop-motion animation effect we saw before the chorus, connoting that we’re coming to the end of it and creating a feeling of cohesion within this section. 

Then we return to the black and white shot we had at the start but here we can see the singer in centre of the shot in the foreground, framed by the two guitarists in the background as he walks towards the camera, singing to the audience. 

Then we enter an instrumental part of the song where we actually move away from the band and see images of a woman, connoting that that’s who he’s singing about. 

This change is further denoted by the style of the shot, it no longer fills the whole screen but instead, a box has been introduced within which the woman is contained. She is also overlaid with shapes that cause her to appear mysterious, connoting she’s unusual and special. 

There’s also a symbol of a red heart - the only bit of colour in this video. I think this splash of red is really effective in highlighting the relevance of the heart and heartbreak which is depicted in this song. 

Furthermore, the use of the symbol from a deck of cards connotes that she’s not genuine or two faced, playing him rather than actually in love. This also links back to the lyrics of the song which describe her being with two men at once. 

The second verse follows almost the same formula as the first. All the previously established shots are used throughout this section giving it a familiarity but also making it very samey to the first verse. It begins with an extreme close-up of his face as he sings in the black and white spotlight before cutting to the stop-motion animation effect we saw before the first chorus. 

We then cut back to the black and white spotlights again and we get varying shots of him intercut with each of the musicians, just as we saw before. The repetitive nature of this section of the video makes it very likely that audiences will zone out and be less engaged with the band. This is something I will be aware to avoid in my music video. 

In the build up to the chorus it cuts back to the silhouette set we were already familiar with but there’s a particularly nice shot where the camera pans for 6 seconds from the drummer up to the singer but, very satisfyingly, the symbol is in the centre of the shot just as it is played, drawing extra attention to that point in the music which I think is very effective. 

We then get a new set which I think is necessary in the video to try and retain audience interest. Instead of singing on a black background he is on a white one. 

There’s a close-up of him singing followed by a close-up of a guitar with echoes of the close-up guitar shot at the beginning, adding a more cohesive element to the video and starting to bring it all together. 

In the middle of this shot the effect comes on without a cut to transition it. 

I think this works really nicely and adds to that rugged, more edgy feel that was established at the start of the video. 

It then cuts back to the black background with a mid-shot of the singer in the foreground, the two guitarists in the mid-ground and the drummer in the background as he continues to lip-synch the song. 

It then returns to the white background for a static shot of simply him lip-synching with slight lighting changes in time with the music to add a little bit of variation to what we’re seeing. 

We then get a shot of the drummer from side on, very similar to one we saw at the start of the video, again beginning to round it up in a cohesive fashion as we head into the final chorus of the song. 

The chorus brings us back to the shots we saw of the woman, further emphasising her role in the story and connoting that she’s what the video’s about. 

All the shots of her are very short, creating a montage of her with different shapes and the red heart over her face. This ensures that the video keeps up with the fast pace of the music. 

It then cuts back to shots of the band, one of the drummer and one of the guitarist with light flares over them which add to the intensity of the music and help the video carry the same energy as the song.

We then get a close-up shot of the singer lip-synching on the white background before getting an extreme close-up of him with the effect on his face, again echoing the beginning of the video as it starts to come to an end. 

For the end of the final chorus we are on the black background where the video started with quite a long shot (in comparison to the others used) of 7 seconds of him just lip-synching to camera. 

I think this works nicely as it contrasts with the fast paced short montages that’ve been used throughout the video to emphasise that last line of the chorus and not detract from the lyrics by having lots of cuts and shot changes. 

At the end of the video, just like Lorde’s Green Light, we see the coming together of all the previously established scenarios to round up the video. There’s close-ups of the instruments on both the blackened white background, use of the inverted colours/x-ray effect, cuts to the silhouette set and use of the stop-motion animation used earlier in the video. 

The editing is fast paced to keep up with the quick beat and this also helps the video build to a crescendo for a big ending where everything has been brought together. 

The video ends in the black room with the spotlights but with the inverted colours effect having been added. 

It slowly trails away from the singer, gradually moving the rest of the band out of shot (as it was filmed handheld) to mimic the fade out and trailing off of the music, matching the tone of the song right until the very end. 

Overall, I think this music video is good but it’s definitely not my favourite one. I think over-emphasis on the band and just having them singing stationary in different rooms can get repetitive and, ultimately, make the video boring. I liked their use of varied shot types and the handheld camera to add a ruggedness and interest which was definitely necessary but I just thought it lacked action. 

As the video itself was quite stationary they had to edit it to match the fast pace of the music by adding in lots of cuts to different shots and locations meaning all the shots are very short, contesting with the Lorde music video which was able to effectively use very long shots whilst still retaining interest. 

I liked how they used a recurring effect to tie the video in together and make it cohesive rather than disjointed and jerky however, I wasn’t a massive fan of the effect itself, I thought it was a bit clunky, especially when it was used with the stop-motion animation. This was probably the intention of the effect but I personally prefer smoother, more flowing camera work as I find it nicer to watch.