This video mixes the narrative of a couple in love with the boy then going to war and footage of the band in performance. This video is very original in the way in mixes narrative with footage of the band performing.
In the beginning of this video we see the conventional series of close-ups that are used to portray the emotion of the characters. The characters are placed in the realistic setting with which comes with connotations of happiness, summer and young love. This is reflected in the shots of the two characters who are staring lovingly. There is also opening dialouge which is conventional of narrative music videos.
After this dialogue the bands non-diagetic music comes in. The music is contrapuntal to the images, as the music is very slow and dower where as the images shown are happy. To stop the audience feeling alienated by the contrasting images and music the director cleverly syncs the images with the music, putting the footage into slow motion. The footage of the band sees them in a live performance and we se a series of shots of the band playing their instruments which is code for their musicality and it is saying how they are real artists and serious about their music.
At this point we have a narrative interlude in which we see and argument between the boy and girl, all with diagetic sound. Afterwards we cut back to the band with a strong drum beat and edits in sync with the beat. We then see images of the boy joining, the the girl alone looking mournful and the band in performance. The shots of the girl alone and the boy at war are dully lighted with a very drab colour scheme and this signifies the dark and drab reality of the situation.
This video is very conventional in the way it focuses on the band, we also see very conventional camera work as well. We see lots of low angle shots of the band, which are signifiers for a live performance. We also see a close up of the lead singers eyes which are covered in dark make-up which are conventional of the anti-establishment demographic.
This video has a lot in common with Kanye West's Jesus Walks. Both have a military narrative and we see the artists in live performance, although Kanye West is in a church so he is in performance within character.
We then see edits in sync with the music and the we see images of the guns and the rockets exploding which is matched with the crescendo in the music and we also here the diagetic sound of the guns and the explosions. There is a coda in the music which allows which allows the narrative to end, and the camera pans out to get the feeling that we are moving away from the story.
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