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1. Detailed Music Video Analysis – Rockstar – Nickleback
To get more knowledge on mise en scene, editing and camera
work/angles I decided to analyse Rockstar by Nickleback which I
know is quite heavy on editing – mostly jump cuts which go from
person to person and has them singing the song.
This stays true to the genre by showing a heavy amount of women
shown in a seductive way, which you expect to see in a rock video,
and supports Barry Keith Grant’s theory of media being recognised
by characteristics that in this case are women in bikinis and acting in
seductive ways.
There are also certain things you expect to see in rock videos such as
seeing the band throughout by cross cutting back and forth between
whatever the video is and the band playing as is shown in my other
video analysis of Cage The Elephant however this one only shows
Nickleback in the last scene of the video when they are playing live.
This challenges the normal vision of rock videos.
This video supports and challenges Goodwin’s theory of star image as
we build a connection to whoever is on the screen for the split few
seconds they have each and relate them all to the voice we here and
picture all of these people as a single person stitched up with the
lyrics and voice we hear however it also goes against it as we do not
build up a star image for a single person throughout the video.
This video supports thought beats to a degree as it switches scenes
whenever the past person has sang some lyrics of the same length as
all the others (1 – 2 lines) however there is no specific sound or beat
that the song changes scene to so therefore it doesn’t completely
support or go against it.
There is a character in this video at points like 0:26 who when
listening to the lyrics seems to be asking how the singer intends on
becoming a Rockstar almost like they’re making a deal, this leaves a
good chunk of narrative to the audience and let them create ideas for
who they think he is and this supports Goodwin’s theory of narrative
and performance.
In relation to visuals of the song, every scene has a great amount of
relation to the song as each scene has at least one person center of

2. the screen singing the lyrics and it illustrative at some points for
example when the lyrics are “get you anything with that evil smile”
and the woman currently singing on screen pulls a giant grin.
Finally mise en scene is authentic to a video in this genre at some
points and also isn’t at some points. For example at some points in
the video we get shown women on deckchairs laid wearing bikinis
which fits in with the video and genre however there are also parts
were we get children singing along were as it isn’t a negative thing in
this video and does add a nice small element to it, it doesn’t fit into
the genre as a whole. The video jumps from one person to another at
relatively the same rate to give everyone the same amount of time
and not seem biased to one specific type of person or group.
The narrative in this video is simple, they want to become a rock star
and are listing what they would do to become one at the start and
throughout the main parts of the song they list what they would do if
they became one and what rock stars can allegedly do, gestures are
used throughout the video to symbolise the narrative for example my
previous point where she smiles along to the lyrics of “an evil smile”
and gives it an illustrative feel.