Real Media Texts - Sieze The Day - Avenged Sevenfold (2006)

Directed by Wayne Isham, the video shows a couple, the vocalist of Avenged Sevenfold, M. Shadows, and his wife (real life girlfriend at the time) Valary DiBenedetto, expecting a child. The rest of the band come to his house and invite him to go out with them, which is later revealed to be a robbery of a liquor store. In the process, Matt gets caught by the police while the others drive off, leaving him behind. Matt goes to jail and his wife comes to visit him. They get into a fight. While driving home, she is killed in a traffic accident. At the funeral her casket is lowered into the ground. Synyster Gates is shown playing the song's guitar solo on top of her casket, but is also in the crowd. In this scene, some one can be seen holding an child, presumably Matt's prematurely born child saved during his mother's death. After the funeral, Matt is in jail suffering and remembering all the good memories he has of his wife. At the end of the video, Matt is at her grave, and the rest of the band comes over to him along with a small boy. Matt picks up the boy and they all walk away.
Some of the video is shown to be filmed by a hand held camera. This fit with the narrative and how shows the relationship between Valary and Matt.
During the shots of the band playing in prison the the video is edited so that the colour is washed out and dull. This contrasts to the high key lighting of the rest of the video, connoting that his life is now drained.
There is a screen in screen when Valary is shown watching the news showing Matt's arrest. This shows the narrative as well as her reaction.
The transitions are mostly cuts, fades and fade to whites. The fade to whites make the clips seem more life memories or dreams making the video more surreal.
The music stops when Valary gets hit by a van. This is more like something that would happen in a film then in a music video.
The shots of Synyster Gates doing a solo is typical of the genre because a guitar solo is a big part of a rock song so they tend to high light this in a video to show off their abilities. Also shows his iconic guitar one of their motifs in their videos.