The music video depicts the lives of two working class boys living a simple lifestyle, contrasted with shots of upper class neighborhoods. It establishes a connection between the audience and the artist through close-up shots of Lorde singing. Various shots are framed symmetrically and depict the boys' simple daily activities to reflect the song's message that celebrity lifestyles are not all they seem. The video uses pacing and shots to match the structure and build of the song without much narrative, representing the lives portrayed through imagery alone.

1. Analysing a Music Video
By James Hargreaves

2. Lorde- ‘Royals’
• The genre of the artist is indierock/electrorock and her songs
have a pop sound to them mixed with an alternative rock style.
• In the song the artist sings about how she is not living the life of
celebrities and that she doesn’t want to or need to as she is
happy with how she is.
• In the video the shots depict the life of two boys (presumably
close friends or brothers) who are living in a working class
lifestyle, and keeps to a simplistic style whilst also showing
performance elements of the artist.

3. The opening shot of the music video is filmed from what appears to be the
back of a car as it drives down a upper class neighbourhood. The colours of
the shot are quite drained, the sky is grey and the tarmac of the road is wet
from rain. Even the houses don’t look very bright or clean. This shows that
even expensive houses and neighbourhoods aren’t always what they seem.
This is what the song reflects on, that we don’t need to live a rich and powerful
life because not all of it is true.
This shot is shown just before the artist begins singing and shows the living
room of a flat in a working class neighbourhood. By having these contrasting
shots of the two different neighbourhoods it creates a juxtaposition allowing
the audience to easily identify the gap in the two social environments. This
shot is also framed within the doorway of the living room, creating order to
the frame. It creates the impression that we the audience are looking into
these peoples life's as the artist shows us what it’s really like to live in this
environment.
This shot of Lorde is shown as she begins singing. Looking at this shot from
a performance element we can see that the artist is represented in a positive
way- she is wearing make-up to enhance her looks as well as having her hair
done. She is making eye contact with the camera to engage the audience
creating a connection that means we want to carry on watching. The shot is
also a close up of Lorde’s face so the connection is that much more
engaging, rather than it being a greater distance away.

4. This next shot shows one of the boys sat in his bed, presumably just having
woken up. The simplicity of the action on screen is enough for the audience
to understand that this boy lives a very simple life. Through the miese-en-
scene we see that he sleeps alone in a single bed in a very simple looking
room. There is nothing fake to the shot, it is what it is. By this point in the
song the bridge is building up to the chorus and in doing so the editing of the
video becomes a lot quicker to match the pace of the song. This helps
combine the pace of the song with what the audience are seeing on screen.
Once again this shot has been framed well using the lines of symmetry
from the curtains to place the T.V in the centre of the frame. The T.V shows
a static screen, this could depict the lack of connection this lower class
society has with the world. Whilst the shot is framed well the T.V is cut off at
the top giving the look of the shot more edge. This might be reflecting how
the life of these boys isn't perfect and that it isn’t clean cut or smart.
This shot is also framed making use of the symmetry. The roof of the
hall meet in the middle where the broken hoop drops down. The boy is
starring up at it in a look of dismay. This could be interpreted as the way
lower class society's look up to celebrities, unable to reach their position
of power and wealth. It could also be said that because this is filmed in a
basketball hall that the whole system of becoming a celebrity is all just a
game and its all a manner of knowing how to play it.

5. As the song reaches the chorus the shots change
in their style. Whereas before we had very still
and motionless shots, the director has chosen to
show us the perspective of someone upwards
looking out of a car window as it drives down a
street. This immediately grabs the audiences
attention as it is one of the very few shots with
motion in the video. It also works with the song as
it is now that the chorus has begun and the song
begins to build in sound and volume.
We return to a previous shot of the living room this
time with the two boys fighting shirtless with boxing
gloves in slow motion. The action depicted in the
shot looks interesting however it is tainted by the
slow motion. This is to create a controlled feeling to
the action on screen and not to alarm the audience.
This shot also correlates well with the music, as the
chorus continues the audiences attention is held by
the action on screen and the range of things being
shown on screen. All of the shots in the video have
been well planed and thought out creating an
aesthetically pleasing look to them. This is called
Substance without surface, when the video looks
good even if it doesn't have anything to say.

6. In conclusion the music video does well at working with the song at representing what the song is putting across:
living in a lower class society is not all that bad compared to the life's celebrity's live. The use of depicting little
action on screen helps to reflect the song’s message of living in an average lifestyle. The artist is represented as
being no more important than the boys in the video, in fact Lorde gets less screen time than the boys in the
whole video. However they don’t appear in the same shots as one other, suggesting that Lorde is separate in
some way from both of them. We could identify this video with being a Televised Bard, Lord is using the imagery
of what is happening on screen to tell us the story of these two boys. However we would not identify this video as
being a narrative as the editing of the shots creates a disjointed feeling and doesn’t show any type of identifiable
storyline, rather snapshots of the life’s of these boys.