New Years Day are a female fronted rock band. This video and song has the lead singer of the heavy metal band Motionless in White performing withing it.
The video is both performance and narrative, it fits with the conventions of a rock video due to the live performance by the band.
It has a typical narrative that is seen in a lot of female front bands which is boy meets girl but boy doesn't turn out how they wanted him to. This is twisted to be more gore and horrific to fit with the persona of the band and the style of music they produce.
There are direct links between lyrics and visual when she is singing about descises and hiding and they are at a mascaraed party with them all wearing masks. This has connotations that you don't know whats on the inside everyone is hidden my the mask they wear.
When the singer sings reach inside my chest there is a close of of a woman's chest. This is a clear show of male gaze. This also shown at the beginning when she is getting ready in a bath room standing in just her underwear. Being a female fronted rock band it is hard to get a strong male audience so by having alot of male gaze in videos it means they can try and build that following by having half naked attractive girls in the videos. Meaning it gets more views and downloads on the Internet.
Also the last time she sings 'Reach inside my chest, you can have whatevers left, cause baby I'm possessed' Chris Motionless reaches into her chest and pulls out her heart. Once he leaves she looks up and her eyes are blacked out showing she is possessed this is a direct relation to lyrics. It is con-notating that he took what he wanted and had her hook straight away. Showing men are manipulating to get that they want.
At the beginning there are a lot of Dutch angles which connote its not quiet real. These angles are mostly used to show a character is drunk or drugged, making them seem confused and disorientated. But in this video the characters are shown to be sober, the use of the angle gives it a unreal and otherworldly feel.
The camera angles between the female and male characters are pretty level through out never really giving anyone dominance till the end. This connotes that you never know the balance in a relationship till one does something to prove for tilt it. In this there is only one very quick low angle on Chris which gives it away other then that it is pretty balanced throughout.
The editing starts off being rather slow a the beginning but speeds up with the tempo of the music. As the song gets faster and louder the editing gets quicker. This really helps the narrative because the story get more intense when the music does, making the whole piece flow together nicely.
There is pretty even amounts of air time between Chris and Ashley. Obviously with Ashley being the lead vocalist of the band she has more singing time and slightly more air time but Motionless in White are a bigger and more well know band meaning he will gain them views by being in the video. Due to this he has a large part in the video.
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