Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson

Nick Lacey’s repertoire of elements can be applied to the music video of Labrinth – Earthquake ft.

Tinie Tempah because of the use of characters, narrative events, iconography, setting and technical

and audio codes.

This video follows a lot of the

conventions of a Hip Hop/Dubstep

music video, in terms of character it is

based around one person, the main

singer in the music video, and this is

unusual as this particular genre of

video usually focuses on dance clubs

that include a lot of people, however

the setting of this video is in a large

empty room making it unconventional but still share some qualities of a stereotypical dance video.

Propp’s character roles don’t apply to this video to much extent because of the lack of characters,

Labrinth could be considered the hero

of the video because of his bright,

colourful clothing within the mise en

scene of the video, his clothing

contrasts with the background of the

scene making him the dominant

contrast of the video, and this is also

stereotypical of the Hip Hop/Dubstep

genre, where high contrast colours are

used to create juxtaposition between

the background and the actor.

Labrinth – Earthquake ft. Tinie Tempah

Target Audience – Male 16-25 years

Genre – Hip Hop/Dubstep

Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson

The use of narrative within Lacey’s repertoire of elements is applied very stereotypically to this

music video, as it is a conceptual video, a narrative doesn’t have much of a conventional story

structure, according to Todorov’s narrative structure the music video is constantly in a state of

equilibrium as no disruption of the equilibrium takes place. The visual effects used in this video are

clearly the main focus of the video. The lyrics however match what is appearing on the screen, with

visual effects taking place when words such as ‘boom’ are used.

In terms of iconography the props that appear during the music video are iconic of the Hip-

Hop/Dubstep genre, the speakers are sized into a variety of different sizes making them the

dominant contrast of the scenes, the bass beats used in the video are emphasised with the use of

particle effects making the audience more attached to the music as the video supports it. Another

use of iconography is the Mini Cooper used at the opening of the music video, Labrinth is from

London and the vehicle the Mini Cooper is a stereotypical British car, this creates audience

familiarity if they know Labrinth’s

background but also appeals to

the target audience of 16-25 year

old males. The other use of

iconography within the mise en

scene of the music video is the

dark cloak costumes that appear

midway through; this is

intertextuality that could be seen

as playing homage to films such

as Star Wars as this is a common

costume for some of the characters in the film creating audience familiarity and also making this

music video postmodern as it is making reference to previous texts that were made during the

postmodern era. The other clothing is conventional of the genre of the video as it is very bright and

contemporary.

The technical audio codes used

are very conventional; the camera

shakes on the bass, and a variety

of camera angles are used to show

the singers dominance, such as

low angles, he can also be seen

singing down to the camera which

follows the hip hop genre. The

cinematography and editing

throughout is parallel to the music

used as the visual effects and cuts appear on certain beats. This follows Nick Lacey’s repertoire of

elements as the audience expect for this to appear in a music video of this genre, this works with

Neale’s mental machinery as the industry have took note of how the audience reacts to this kind of

visually appealing video and they have reused it with a variation to make it appealing to the target

audience. In terms of Neale’s theory of repetition and difference this video is conventional of a

dance music video because of the lack of narrative and visual effects, however it is different in the

Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson

way how the video only contains one person, the singer, rather than a full group of people dancing,

this makes the video different and appeals to the audience.

To conclude this video is very visually driven, because of the effects and genre of the video being Hip

Hop/Dubstep the conceptual type of video is expected to match the sound and to make the

spectators emerged into the text and follows Nick Lacey’s repertoire of elements. The addition of

popular singers such as Tinie Tempah and the approach that they have tried to take with the lack of

a narrative it appeals to the target audience of 16-25 year olds.