Tuesday, 13 September 2011

My Chemical Romance - Na Na Na Music Video Analysis.

After analysing Ed Sheeran's The A Team, I thought I'd now analyse My Chemical Romance Na Na Na video. I've chosen to analyse this music video as it's a different genre to Ed Sheeran's, The A Team video. My Chemical Romance is a well known alternate rock band and have won a various amount of awards. Also this video has had a lot more money spent on it whereas Ed Sheeran's created a low budget video. The other difference is My Chemical Romance is a recognised rock band which is known to be legendary to the rock world. 

My Chemical Romance started out in 2001. Gerard Way created the band, and his influence was the tragic 9/11 attack on which he witnessed resulted him to creating this band to express his feelings about the event. The members include Gerard Way, Ray Toro, Mickey Way, Frank Lero. Past members were, Matt Pelissier and Bob Bryar. 



The very first shot is a long shot of a strange looking man, with the settings look as if he's in the wilderness. This questions the viewer into thinking why is there a strange man, wearing spotty leggings, a helmet, and roller skates in the middle of nowhere. There is then a cut to an extreme close up of a man talking down an old fashioned microphone. We then see a quick flash of three shots of the lead singer (Gerard Way) wearing a motorbike style outfit. A series of close up / extreme close up shots are presented showing the band members getting ready into some superhero costumes, the band members getting ready, and the close up's of the weapons indicate they are getting ready for a battle. 





As the music starts to kick in, the band members leave the typical american run down cafe. And the shot reverse shot revels the band members significant brand identity logo, of a spider with a with a lightning strike down it's back, and big fangs at the front, We link spiders with fear, as a lot of people are afraid of spiders, this is typically of a Rock band to do as they want the audience to believe they are strong, dominant and not afraid of anything. This spider logo is the brand identity for the whole of this album, being shown throughout a number of different ways, without the audience even realising. 





Above is another example of where the brand logo has been placed. So this logo we see everywhere, to signify the band and its expectations of that band. The screen transition changes to a three shot comic book feel to link with the narrative of the superhero theme. This quick transition ends within a couple  of seconds, all of the picture of the car racing off, apart from one quick shot is of a cat like costume, which could be the enemy or part of the band. Later on we come to realise that this again is part of the band member. The transition finishes with an explosion indicating something is about to happen.  The next couple of seconds includes the quick shots of again the band getting ready to battle.

A quick shot of Gerard Way and a tall bold man with him grasping Geared in what looks like an unpleasant way as his facial expressions show this. Finally we have met the enemy to our narrative. That shot leads to the next couple of shots of the enemy man getting into a black car, with a face like symbol on the car. Immediately as an audience we recognise the difference from the good guys (the band) and the bad guys, the man in black. We then see the other members of the bad side, with white masks, riding white motorbikes. The contrast between the white and black colours for that team signify who his the dominant role out of that team.

As the words in the song are swearing they are covered with a bleeping sound so people are not offended by these words. It is typical of a rock genre band to swear in there lyrics as it shows they are typically rebellious. In the video this has been covered with a fussy television screen which have the white words of bli in a black circle.

The battle begins between the two teams, starting with them shooting each other with laser guns from there car
s. Again all extremely fasted pasted, with a different range of camera shots used. The next couple of shots include the band members singing together and the band members fighting against the bad guys. As Gerard way takes down three of the bad guys the long shot changes into a quick flash of the spider iconic symbol, almost declaring that they have been defeated. As the Band members begin to slowly defeat the bad team, we see the bad team get fewer and fewer and the main guy getting angrier, as there is a tracking shot of him ripping down a poster, and getting violent towards his team members, almost encouraging them to do better.

As the battle continues the band members come to a vending machine which provides laser guns and batterys for the guns, this is shown through extreme close up's. The long shot revels that the machine has the same symbol which was on the car, resulting it to being the bad guy's gun from the vending machine.

As the music starts to slow down, so does the paste of the shots, and it becomes night time and we see the band members preparing for what looks like dinner as they are sat around the fire. The unforced mid shot displays one of the bad guys to the members which quickly cuts to the main leader of the bad team miming the lyric's of "Everyone wants to change the world" which switched between focused and unfocused, showing his mental state of anger and frustration.

We see a series of shots of the two teams getting out of there cars to confront one another, this is taken though a long process until actually coming face to face, this keeps the viewer intrigued. The bad guys seem to become ganging up on the younger most vulnerable team member of the good side, but they quickly get defeated. As the band members save the boy and take off there mask, there hero names appear, in a retro but slightly transparent font.

Finally we see both teams face to face, ready to declare the winner. When the little boy holds up the signal. The screen the goes blank and we see the band members on the floor injured. The close up shot shows Gerard's eyes opening that revels the bad guys have captures the boy, and it ends with the main bad guy saying "Keep running" this is what the audience didn't want to happen which makes it a good cliffhanger to end with. 



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