Linkin Park – New Divide

The first music video that I am going to analysis is Linkin Park’s New Divide. In doing so I will be answering six questions that will help me to complete a thorough analysis. I will also be looking at the album cover and advert that was produced for this video, and again the same questions will be asked on about the cover and advert.

Firstly, the effects that the band achieve.

The music video has an outstanding variety of editing and special effects that make the video a visual masterpiece. The video has a large amount of band performance footage in which in my opinion is very important. Also, without the live band performance, many of the SFX and editing would not be possible. The lead singer has a very large part to play in the video as the camera is mainly focused on him, he also uses a massive amount of energy, possibly to put emphasis on the on his characters feelings. Another point being that there is a massive amount of artificial lighting used in this video, which helps the band stand out. The amount of special effects used in the video is monumental, effects such as blur and thermal imaging makes the video very pleasing to watch. One of the main features that I noticed was the shaking camera in certain parts of the video, making the camera seem unable to ‘cope’ with the bands powerful performance.

The narrative is very clear due to the band performance. The lead singer seems to help us to understand the narrative through body language and facial expressions alone. What’s more is, every now and then a female character seems to emerge from the special effects, but only for a few seconds, creating a sense of mystery. The lead singer seems to mention the word ‘divided’ and ‘across this new divide’ suggesting that there was a relationship between the singers character and a woman and that there had been problems, forcing them apart, new problems, new divide. The editing and special effects are used to effect in helping with the emotions of the song, using fire for anger and sadness and mystic blue for regret. In some areas of the song the SFX help to bring out the emotion in the performers faces.

Secondly, structure of the video.

The live performance of the band in this video is outstanding. The lead singer has a very dominant role and because of that puts maximum effort into his singing and acting skills. What makes this video so unique is that the setting is very very different to any other music video. The lighting also plays a very special part in the music video. In one shot we see them turn a orange/red colour due to the editing and special effect, this helps to bring out the emotion to that part of the song, which is anger. One of the best aspects about this video is that it is not focused on one band member, in most shots there are shots of the other band members.

The structure of the video really helps the viewer to understand the narrative extremely well, mainly because of the main band members energy and commitment and the choice of lyrics as well. In my opinion the band performance is what makes this video really outstanding what with the video being be structured around a very easy to understand story line and being able to keep the same story all the way through the video, which leads me onto my next point.

The concept of this video is very simplistic as it keeps the same storyline all the way through. In doing so it is easy to follow and easy to understand. The main concept is that the main singers character has lost a loved one, although the cause is unknown, and feels regret, sadness and anger, which is expressed through SFX, editing and the energy of the singer with the leading role in the music video. Because of the raw emotion that is seen in the lead singer (Chester Bennington).

The mise-en-scene that the band uses are very unique, such as the cave were the music video is set through to the clothing of the band members. The members emulate a very dark style of clothing, mainly black jeans and grey and black t-shirts. However, the lead singers is seen wearing a white t-shirt underneath a black hoody, suggesting that he still has feelings for his loved one. As said before the lighting plays a very big part in the video, it plays a big part in showing the characters emotions.

The video when released was a massive hit in America and UK mainly because of the sheer amount of special effects that have been included. The band Linkin park is already a massive band worldwide, but creating this video has made them even more well known.

The video is slightly in the shadow of another great visual masterpiece, What I’ve Done, this video was a major hit around the globe, this video was so good it was nominated the Best Hard Rock Performance at the 52^nd Grammy awards. The career of this bad has been phenomenal, releasing 6 CD’s with another new one on the way.

Lastly target audience.

The first obvious fans that are targeted are Linkin park fans. But the amount of effects and editing techniques are outstanding and I think that is what would make this video appealing to a lot of people, even if they are not a fan of Linkin Park. I think they are targeted by the genre of the song and the type of video.

As a lot of the other videos that have been researched have included a lot of emotion, this is also what we are going to try to do, is to included a large amount of emotion, from all the band members.