Drake released "Marvin's Room" on his album "Take Care". The music video provides a dark and lonely perspective of Drake as he gets intoxicated at a club alone. Throughout the video, Drake is isolated and detached even when surrounded by people. The colors, lighting, and film techniques used create a dreamlike and confusing narrative that reflects Drake's inner thoughts and loneliness. Unlike many other hip hop videos that glorify wealth and partying, "Marvin's Room" shows a more personal and emotional side of Drake.

1. Music Video Analysis
Drake - Marvins Room
!
Drake Aubrey Graham released Marvins Room on his album Take Care. Drake’s R&B al-
bum rocketed through the charts as well as his career all around the world. Marvins Room
shows a dark side to drake inside of his head, this contrasts to his other videos which show
him as a rich, powerful young artist who is loving his life.
The music video for Marvins Room is a narrative, and
similar to most music video’s includes Drake the artist
himself. The video shows Drake getting intoxicated as he
is out a club/bar. The video gives the audience no indi-
cation of time, with camera shots only being shown of
night time, which makes the video feel very isolated.
This links to the loneliness that Drake is presenting. This loneliness which he is presenting is
very different to other hip-hop videos as most of them show the artist surrounded by money,
friends and women, whereas in this Drake has opted to show a much more human emotion
within his video instead of exacerbating his wealth and power. This non-linear narrative
makes the video quite confusing to watch which again links to the artists inner thoughts as
well as making the audience want to watch the video in closer detail to work out what is hap-
pening, which in my opinion makes the video more interesting.
When analysing the characters within the video the only person which is shown throughout is
Drake, this again makes the video feel isolated as well as making him the main protagonist.
Throughout video we see many people drinking as well
smoking drugs surrounding Drake, we also see a few girls
come up to the artist trying to talk to him but his mind his
elsewhere. This is interesting as it shows us that even though
he has people around him, be thats friends or family he still
feels alone, and by getting intoxicated he makes it worse for
himself. In the song a girl can be heard having a telephone
conversation, she is also featured in the video. I believe
that the girl has been used to also make the audience be-
lieve that Drake is having girl problems, and the reason
he is so drunk and detached from the people round him
is because of her. Again this breaks the conventions of a
typical Hip-hop video; while in most videos of this genre

2. the artists a disrespecting girls and treating them as sex objects, whereas in this Drake misses
the girl and shows his true feelings.
!
Inside of this video the mis en scene plays a huge part. The video uses an array of a low key
colours while emphasising the colours and brightness of lights which have been shot by the
camera. This makes the video quite hard to see at times, I believe this has been purposely
done to make it more confusing to watch, again re-enforcing the narrative. Alongside the low
key colours and bright lights a golden brown and
red filter has been used to make the video look even
more dream like, or how being drunk visually can
look. These tones also contrast with the rich lifestyle
Drake lives as well as linking to his new album Take
Care, which visually looks the same. In one scene
we see the artist looking at himself in a dirty
cracked mirror sighing and scratching his head, this
suggests he doesn’t like what he see’s which is maybe a real representation of how he feels
about his own life.
As well as the colours used in the video the clothing which the characters are wearing also
play a large part in the way the it visually forms together. At the start of the video we see a
girl wearing hardly anything other than a long top,
this creates a sense of realism as this is what girls
wear in at home on their own. Drake is seen wear-
ing a black hoodie with a huge gold watch on his
right wrist, this suggests he has wealth but in this
video isn’t dressing to his full potential to show his
power. As the video progresses we see other char-
acters which are supposed to be Drake’s ‘crew’,
they are all wearing either black, white or gold.
These 3 colours work perfectly with the way the
video looks, furthermore suggesting the wealth and
power which as a collective they all hold.
!
In Marvins Room there is an extremely large array
of shots and editing techniques which have been
used. For example at the start of the video when the girl is talking on the phone a slight over-
lay of another clip has been used on top of the clip,
this makes it look detached from the rest of the video,
also again making it feel and look dream like. Further
on we see a few scenes of a city being shot from inside
of a car as it passes by driving down a road, as this oc-

3. curs about 2 others scenes are transparently again overlaid on the top. This has been used in-
stead of cutting or fading from scene to scene, which I believe makes the video much more
interesting to watch.
Overall I think that Marvins Room is incredibly interesting to watch as it gives an insight of
an extremely famous artist mental thoughts instead of it being a video surrounding his wealth
and party lifestyle. The way it has been filmed and edited together makes it quite difficult yet
interesting to watch, but overall a cleverly thought out product.