Music Video Analysis - Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys – Why’d you only call me when you’re high?

Directed by Nabil Elderkin

This music video encompasses the bands persona perfectly. It really talks to their fans through the use of Iconography.  The lead singer, Alex Turner, adorns a leather biker jacket, he is known for his rock and roll style, and fits the type of rock music that his band produces. Right through the video there are disturbing images of sex, drugs and alcohol use, again this attracts to the demographic that this music is aimed at.

The video starts with music from another song on the Arctic Monkeys album. This would mean that any person watching this video could link the two songs together to that band so that they can listen to it, and increase the revenue for that artist. This also makes it feel as though the video has been given a lot of thought, and so the diehard fans, can also be excited with the directors hard work.

Ambient sound is used in the bar scene, to make the scene feel more realistic and as though the audience can feel more involved in this microcosmic world that the director imagined.

The music becomes muffled when the protagonist, Alex, steps into toilet. Quentin Tarantino also uses this technique in his movie, Reservoir Dogs, again to add realism to the piece of work.

The audience has the view of the main character as he starts seeing hallucinations of the clock spinning very fast and eventually ‘melting’. This image is very iconic of the artwork, The Persistence of Memory, painted by the artist, Salvador Dalí. This is just one of the intertextual moments throughout the whole music video.

The protagonist looks into the mirror where he sees himself distorted. CGI and editing is used heavily during the entire video.

Music becomes much louder and sounds muffled and distorted… very low pitch

The camera does a close up of the protagonist drinking /taking shots. The director cuts the time between shots taken. This use of ellipses shows that the lead character doesn't remember much of that night.

The music then crashes and sounds distorted, it sounds very slow and low pitch, as though the CD that the music is coming from has been scratched.

The camera staggers around looking at the protagonist. The camera is most likely at the point, being used with a Steadicam.

Then the beat of the actual song kicks in with big thuds of the drums, which drills into the viewers’ heads.

The central character staggers out of the bar and onto the street, where the two images juxtapose. It was a very tight/cramped and relatively dark space in the bar whereas it seems very isolated and lonely on the streets with only street lamps leading the way.

The camera follows behind the protagonist at some points of the video so you only see the back of his head, this adds a feeling of the viewer looking into this one persons life.

There is use of CGI to create text messages on the screen so that the viewer can read the text, this again allows for the viewer to feel even more involved in their life.

The protagonist looks at his phone again, and sees it sink into his skin, editing used to do so. This shows how he has no control over the situation he is in and as though he is sinking into nothing.

This music video puts the viewer in the place of a highly drugged up and intoxicated man, hence the title of the song. The whole impression of the music video allows for the audience to feel the emotions of the lead character with the use of camera, editing, sound and mise en scene.

The Target Audience for the Arctic Monkeys is Teenage Boys who have a rebellious attitude. As seen in the music video there is use of smoking , drugs and sex. These are obvious signals that the artists aims their music video for young men.

The star image is a very cool, suave and sophisticated band. As they wear leather bicker jacket, have their hair gelled back. And have racy and controversial topics in their music video.

This video relates to our music video as it shows the capacity of what editing we can use without making the end video look typically unprofessional. Also the band is made up of men and so is the group we chose and so we can see how the director directed them when filming.