1. Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson
Labrinth – Earthquake ft. Tinie Tempah
Target Audience – Male 16-25 years
Genre – Hip Hop/Dubstep
Nick Lacey’s repertoire of elements can be applied to the music video of Labrinth – Earthquake ft.
Tinie Tempah because of the use of characters, narrative events, iconography, setting and technical
and audio codes.
This video follows a lot of the
conventions of a Hip Hop/Dubstep
music video, in terms of character it is
based around one person, the main
singer in the music video, and this is
unusual as this particular genre of
video usually focuses on dance clubs
that include a lot of people, however
the setting of this video is in a large
empty room making it unconventional but still share some qualities of a stereotypical dance video.
Propp’s character roles don’t apply to this video to much extent because of the lack of characters,
Labrinth could be considered the hero
of the video because of his bright,
colourful clothing within the mise en
scene of the video, his clothing
contrasts with the background of the
scene making him the dominant
contrast of the video, and this is also
stereotypical of the Hip Hop/Dubstep
genre, where high contrast colours are
used to create juxtaposition between
the background and the actor.

2. Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson
The use of narrative within Lacey’s repertoire of elements is applied very stereotypically to this
music video, as it is a conceptual video, a narrative doesn’t have much of a conventional story
structure, according to Todorov’s narrative structure the music video is constantly in a state of
equilibrium as no disruption of the equilibrium takes place. The visual effects used in this video are
clearly the main focus of the video. The lyrics however match what is appearing on the screen, with
visual effects taking place when words such as ‘boom’ are used.
In terms of iconography the props that appear during the music video are iconic of the HipHop/Dubstep genre, the speakers are sized into a variety of different sizes making them the
dominant contrast of the scenes, the bass beats used in the video are emphasised with the use of
particle effects making the audience more attached to the music as the video supports it. Another
use of iconography is the Mini Cooper used at the opening of the music video, Labrinth is from
London and the vehicle the Mini Cooper is a stereotypical British car, this creates audience
familiarity if they know Labrinth’s
background but also appeals to
the target audience of 16-25 year
old males. The other use of
iconography within the mise en
scene of the music video is the
dark cloak costumes that appear
midway through; this is
intertextuality that could be seen
as playing homage to films such
as Star Wars as this is a common
costume for some of the characters in the film creating audience familiarity and also making this
music video postmodern as it is making reference to previous texts that were made during the
postmodern era. The other clothing is conventional of the genre of the video as it is very bright and
contemporary.
The technical audio codes used
are very conventional; the camera
shakes on the bass, and a variety
of camera angles are used to show
the singers dominance, such as
low angles, he can also be seen
singing down to the camera which
follows the hip hop genre. The
cinematography and editing
throughout is parallel to the music
used as the visual effects and cuts appear on certain beats. This follows Nick Lacey’s repertoire of
elements as the audience expect for this to appear in a music video of this genre, this works with
Neale’s mental machinery as the industry have took note of how the audience reacts to this kind of
visually appealing video and they have reused it with a variation to make it appealing to the target
audience. In terms of Neale’s theory of repetition and difference this video is conventional of a
dance music video because of the lack of narrative and visual effects, however it is different in the

3. Music Video Analysis Josh Robinson
way how the video only contains one person, the singer, rather than a full group of people dancing,
this makes the video different and appeals to the audience.
To conclude this video is very visually driven, because of the effects and genre of the video being Hip
Hop/Dubstep the conceptual type of video is expected to match the sound and to make the
spectators emerged into the text and follows Nick Lacey’s repertoire of elements. The addition of
popular singers such as Tinie Tempah and the approach that they have tried to take with the lack of
a narrative it appeals to the target audience of 16-25 year olds.