This music video, is shot in the Californian desert, is by the Linkin
Park, an American rock band. This song is from the album Minutes To Midnight. The band performing in desert is the main base
track of the video that holds it together and the imagery of the band in a
desert area is also replicated in the album cover and the official band website
cover at the time. This is an aspect of intertextuality which would ensure that
the audience are familiar with that same image and will help promote the artists
better.
A sense of slow motion is created (directly after the fast action in the video of explosions, world crises, riots and the falling of a statue of the dictator Saddam Hussein) is located after the instrumental (non-vocal) segment after the second chorus by slowing down the movement of the band members while implementing the collapse of the World Trade Centre. A small amount of ocean of life is used when Chester Bennington sings "and wash away...” which presents the video structure to be partly illustration.
Another interesting thing I noticed was how camera angles were used. This video was shot in an extremely sunny location; the camera is almost always shot from underneath the band members to create a sense of importance with the people. Furthermore, they used a lot of tracking shots to focus on the artists and instruments such as the drum set, which is a common element of rock and indie music videos.
In the transition between the second chorus and the third were the
lyrics, "Today this ends... [...] forgiving what I've done", there
was the flower blooming and the baby. The repeated images of a baby, a growing
flower and a baby scan is shown in between shots of someone injecting drugs
inside them. This birth of both the flower and the baby represents a new start
for a person or the world.
Overall, there are many things that made this an amazing song and
video; the lyrics have double meaning. If someone was only listening to the
song, they might interpret the lyrics about the band stating what they have
become, what they may have done wrong and what they need to change. This would
be reinforced by some of the lyrics such as ‘I’ll face myself, to cross out what I’ve become. Erase myself, and let
go of what I’ve done’. However, when
one watches the music video with the song, they would realise the much deeper
and specific meaning about what mankind has done to the world and how we need
to put things right.
Occasionally,
the clips in this video change on the beat of the music but sometimes on the
half beat. The lengths of the shots vary throughout the video and at times, the
pictures change very fast from one historic moment to a disaster. I think this editing
works well for the video as it may suggest how global tragedies and global
warming is unpredictable and unexpected. Linkin Park have taken advantage of
the fact that they have a global fan base by presenting the audience with these
horrific images (the type of things people would usually ignore); the video was
on all the major music channels, which made it impossible to ignore and the
band sent out a chilling environmental message to the world. The success of
this song was highlighted by the use of it in the hit movie Transformers, a blockbuster which has
some relation to the subject in the song as it is partly about resources and it
falling into the wrong hands. This meant that the song reached out to an even
bigger audience and it led to another Linkin Park single, New Divide, to star in the sequel to Transformers.
