Music Video Analysis: Lana Del Rey- Summertime Sadness
The video is about two women in love who's loved drifted at the end of summer. This sadly was too much for one of them and so committed suicide. At the news of this caused her ex lover to do the same this as they couldn't live without each other.
This video is very indie and the style of it is very vintage which is why I have chosen to analyse it. The image style is very old fashioned, like you're watching a really old film, with all the 'crackles' on the screen. I would describe the video as quite disorienting, hows its edited with cuts to different things quite quickly and some purposely blurred footage.
At the start of the music video, there is footage of the sky which has been taken over time, the sun is setting, this could represent their love. We then hear a phone call from a woman telling Lana; "remember, I'll always love you, bye". We can't see who's saying it which leaves a sense of mystery. There's then a close up of Lana and she looks sad and lost, this is representing what she's feeling like without her love. It then blanks her out with a white flash, you can still see the silhouette of her though slightly, this could show what she feels is left of her, just her shell, her body, because her soul belongs with someone else.
There's an establishing shot shown, showing cliffs and a waterfall. We then see a long shot of her standing at the top of the cliffs and it cuts to close up of her face and she sings the opening lyrics with a pain on her face. This continuity editing lets us put together what is happening and what might happen, although it's very jumping, it shows continuity editing has been used at the start. There's then a long shot of the back of Lana, we can see the horizon and where the land ends, we see the tree's so aligned and symmetrical but theres a gap where she stands, almost showing that this is what is meant to happen there's a gap there for you to stand in because this is what you have to do, because you can't be happy anymore. The lighting is dull, like it's sun set, again this shows, this lighting has been used to show the end. Her arms then spread apart and we watch her calmly fall off the edge of the cliff and then we see a black screen to show the end.
We then begin to see flash backs of her life and then life together in parts of the music video. It's quite hard to figure what is a flash back and what is not at times. The transactions between different shots are covered by a cloud of smoke covering the screen which is clever, this gives quite an angelic feel as they almost look like clouds; representing heaven.
We see a woman in a red dress, driving fast in a car looking very upset. The over the shoulder shot from the car shows what she's doing and it shows a close up shot of her very disturbed face.
As Lana sings certain lyrics there are lyrical matches in the song; when she is singing about 'telephone wires' there's a shadow of telephone wires going over her and when she sings the word fire, theres a bright orange flame covering the screen.
There are then lots of flashbacks all edited together very fast and then they stop as we see an over the shoulder shot of the ghost of Lana in the car staring at her ex lover as she drives very distressed showing that she's always with her.
We can then see Lana's ex lover, climb over onto the bridge. In between the shots of her on the bridge there are many cuts to short footage of them two together and this could represent what's running through her mind at the moment. There shows a pull focus from establishing the bridge to the emotions on her face as she's standing there and through the flash backs it cuts to an extreme close up of her crying face and then we see her fall from the bridge to show the pain that she's feeling.
We see a statue of Jesus pinned on the cross and it zooms in closer to him and then very are shown various different shots of Lana lifting up her arms just like Jesus before she then jumps of the cliff. This shows that like Jesus, Lana didn't want to die because he wanted to but because he had to, there was no other way, and that represents how Lana felt, like this was the only way out, heartbreak murdered her.
We then see Various shots of Lana and her ex falling to their deaths, slowly and floaty, and theres smoke, it almost looks like they're diving into a calm pool of smoke. Again this could be the representation of heaven and them meeting again in heaven. We obviously don't see them hit the flood but what we do see a red piece of glass hit the floor and smash representing the ex in her red dressing crashing to her death.
There's then more flash back of them both but they're broken up by shots of the two lover consumed in smoke, we see eye line matches of them looking at each other showing they are together again perhaps as the smoke could be heaven.
The video finished with a long shot of the road that some of their memory footage together was taken on, and then we see the spooky spirt of Lana walking down it, showing that road and memories mean something to her as her spirit wanted to visit it.
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