Music Video Analysis - Vance Joy

Vance Joy – Riptide

Directed by Dimitri Basil

This music video is a perfect example of a music video that illustrates the lyrics effortlessly. The music video is very quirky and contains very ‘indie’ kind of shots; this very much matches with the genre of music Vance Joy composes, Indie Folk.

The music starts immediately, which many music videos don’t nowadays, as they usually involve a prelude, which sometimes involves narration or talking.

The camera tilts down from clouds in the sky. Camera cuts to a close up of woman who seems to be strapped in a dentist’s chair. She has dental paraphernalia affixed to her jaw all of what is going on seems to match the songs lyrics.

The camera whip pans quickly so that two shots look like they are stitched together, and so that the characters are in the same scene.

Then the camera whip pans again to a woman strapped to a tree, where she unties herself, with the audio “they come unstuck”… The same lyric is repeated later but uses a different shot, this time with an ice-lolly being pulled apart. This adds humour to the production, as the lyrics of the song point to it being a love song.

Shots again mirroring the lyrics of the song, such as running; riptide; and cowboy

A scene is repeated later on but changed slightly. A woman is singing using her left hand on the microphone and she seems to sing the words wrong, well at least the subtitles are wrong, this illustrates the lyrics. The woman’s make up becomes increasingly more smudged and her hand starts to bleed at one point. Which adds unnecessary severity to the situation.

Shots are then sequenced together where the camera is portraying what the character is seeing, almost at bird’s eye view. Where the characters hands can be seen but no body. This adds to the impression that the audience witnesses what the character is seeing.

Whip pans are used again to cut shots together. Then the camera zooms into a female character from long shot to medium long shot.

A shot of a woman running is different from the other shots of a woman running as she stops and then the camera is at a canted angle so that the ocean in the background is distorted, while the lyrics are identical.

The video concludes with a fade to black, accentuating the end of the piece of work.

Target Audience is Hipster Teenagers, as the song and the video concepts is quite indie. However the song did enter the mainstream charts and so may be directed to more of the dominant market

The Star Image is a very indie band, that doesn't take themselves too seriously. Also the main protagonist in the video is not the lead singer. This means that the artist isn't sold on their looks, and also means that it attracts teenage boys as the 'male gaze' is used to attract a male audience.

This music video is related to my music video as it has elements that I wish to use in my video, such as the illustration of lyrics. But for our idea we wanted to contradict the lyrics, which is what some sections of this music video does.