Linear Media Post

What exactly determines how long shots are? Camera angles and shots are all different and their movements combine to create a sequence of images, just like a sentence, the order combine to have it make sense and create a meaning. The piece of media I analyzed is a music video by The Weeknd. As explained to me, a linear pice of media has a traditional beginning, middle and end which this video contains. The events happen sequentially as opposed to experimental or abstractly. The beginning starts off with the artist singing to an audience, towards the middle he is still serenading the crowd while a suspicious man is at the club watching him. The camera keeps focusing on a woman who is watching the artist perform, and right while this happens the artist is set on fire at the hands of the suspicious man. The ending is the artist finishing his song while still on fire, but the crowd is going wild. Since it is a music video, the sounds are the the lyrics to the song and it matches up perfectly to the images because you can see the artist performing them. Each image matches the sound playing in the background. The constant reference to the woman in the music video matches the lyrics which seem to indicate that the woman is like a drug which makes him unable to feel his face, as if it were on fire which he becomes in contact with. What is also interesting to note is the correlation to his other music videos, the suspicious man who lights the artist on fire is in many other music videos as if each music video were a piece of a larger story. The shots are mainly close ups of each character from the artist, to the woman, to the suspicious man. This reinforces the suspicious of the man while indicating a love-type relationship between the artist and this woman. The colors remain consistent throughout the piece, dark and only colored when the artist is set aflame placing emphasis on him. The cuts seem smooth and seamless, to indicate a story being told. What determines long and short shots is the importance of the shots and how much emphasis to place on the shot.

piece of media analyzed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEI4qSrkPAs