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

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.