Analysing Paramore videos

Video 3: Playing God 

I thought this would be a really important video to analyse because I think it’s when you can really tell that Paramore took the music in a different direct and this shows with the music video – it’s the most different one from the Brand New Eyes album than the video below, ‘That’s What You Get’. It could be due to the fact that the music video is for a song on a different album, or just that the group were changing and growing up throughout the process, but nearly everything about this video is different to the earlier ones.

Firstly, the style has completely changed in this video. It might just be the theme of the video though because other videos from the Brand New Eyes album is just purely live footage. The style of this video is almost a 1950s style with Hayley wearing dresses and having her hair really neat rather than a messier look.

The clothes she wearing are hugely varied than in any other video – the audience are used to seeing her in jeans but suddenly she is wearing dresses with bows in her hair.

There are two different costumes for Hayley and I think this has been done on purpose – she wears a grey dress and a red dress. She is seen in the basement wearing a red dress when the boys (Josh, Zac, Jeremy and Taylor) are tied up with ropes being held hostage. I think this could be to symbolise her being dangerous and all the boys are wearing dark colours. Interestingly she is wearing a grey dress when sat at the dinner table with extras who I assume are her next victims almost as if the character she is playing leads a double life.

The props are also important in creating a certain style because an old fashioned teapot and cups and saucers.

The lighting is really expert in this video and maybe it was because it was thought through more as it looks like a more thought-through video altogether. It contrasts a lot between light and dark – again it could be showing the contrast between the character’s two sides. When Hayley is holding a magnifying glass against her eye in a dark room, the place where the glass is, is lighting one part of her face up. It could be to show that the character is a predominantly dark person, but she does have a small amount of innocence that she fools people with.

There is performance footage from the band when they are in the basement and the boys have been untied. The room is dark but there is a light bulb hanging down by a wire over their heads – this is similar to the Ignorance video too. The darkness shows the mystery of what will happen. When Hayley opens the hatch to the outside world, the boys think they will get free – so the natural light shine on them, but as Hayley closes the door leaving them there, the screen cuts to black.

The camerawork is very simple for this piece as there aren’t any effects like the fish eye lens like there was with the ‘That’s What You Get’ video – this could be because the story of the narrative is quite complicated so they wanted to make the camerawork and editing simple, so not to take away from the bands acting and the context of the piece overall. However, there is a close-up of a cross hanging from the mirror in the car Hayley gets out of, showing the band are religious.

Some of the shots seen link to the lyrics of the song. For example, Hayley is looking at her reflection in a mirror and one of the lyrics is ‘Next time you point a finger, I’ll point you to the mirror’. This also happens when she sings ‘Maybe you should tie me up, so I can’t go where you don’t want me’ and the boys are seen bound by rope in the basement.

I believe there are links to the bands private affairs in this video, because Hayley literally is ‘playing God’ with their lives – she’s completely in control and is clearly the leader. This is fascinating to me because  when Josh and Zac left the band, it was because they felt like Hayley was the only one that was getting any attention – that she was the star and they were just her back-up rather than all the band members being equals. This is relevant to the video, I think, whether it was meant to be or not.