The document summarizes key elements of the music video for the song "Figure it Out" by the band Royal Blood. It discusses how the video uses techniques like flashbacks, changes in color tone, and match cuts to portray two sides of the story and challenge the audience's perspective. The flashback shows the woman's capture from her point of view, and changing between red and blue tones represents open and closed textual interpretations. Through these techniques, the video enhances the song's lyrics about trying to understand what is happening.

2. Introduction
• Royal Blood are a hard rock band from
Brighton, England. Their song 'Figure it Out'
was first released on August 18th 2014,
appearing on the band's fourth single and
third track on their self titled album.

3. Barthes' Codes - Open and Closed
Texts
• This video uses both open and closed texts, emphasised
through the use of two tone colouring to create alternate
interpretations. The video opens with the red overlay, and
the text is open for the audience to create their own
meaning about what is happening in the scene.
• However, when the overlay turns blue, the text becomes
closed and the meaning begins to become more explicit. As
the narrative progresses, the audience's perspective on the
video is challenged as the woman is not the only criminal.
This is shown through the flashback of the woman escaping
from the van after the present narrative of the woman
stabbing the male who captured her.

4. Open and Closed Texts

5. Flashbacks
• The purpose of the flashback is to recount the female's
events of being captured before the sequence of events
started in order to fill in the missing gap of the story, either
supporting or challenging the audience's perspective of the
story.
• This type of flashback is called an external analepsis, which
is a flashback before the narrative started. This flashback is
supported by fast paced,
choppy shots of the woman
inside the van, to create a
sense of urgency and panic.

6. Continuity Editing
• The video establishes a logical coherence
between shots through the use of continuity
editing even though the video is supposed to
create confusion. The audience can see
through the use of two tone colour that there
are two sides to the conflict, reality and what
the woman sees.

7. Goodwin’s Theory
• The music video creates a strong sense of storytelling
through frequent use of match on action, in which one
shot cuts into the other portraying action from the first
shot. The music video amplifies the lyrics through the
theme of "trying to figure it out". As the video
progresses, the audience has to work out the real story
of events for themselves, "figuring out" the plotline
with help of the flashback. The video develops the
simplistic lyrics, taking the idea of "nothing here to
see" and changing the colour of the scene, in order to
portray the alternate side of the story.

8. Claude Levis Strauss Theory
• “Constant creation of conflict/opposition drives
narrative"
• flashback vs real time
• visual contrast between red tone (open text) and
blue tone (explicit) to create contrast between
illusion and reality
• constant opposition between woman walking
slowly and fast paced fight scenes to intensify the
action and suspense
• conflict between what we see as love (2:19) and
hate (2:22)