editing and structure of music videos

1. Analysing the Editing and
Structure of a Music Video –
Echosmith, Cool Kids
By Nishat Hossain and Fahad Miah

2. Right at the beginning of the song, before
the lyrics started there was extremely
quick cuts of all the members of
echosmith by themselves. All of them
except the female were featured on the
same wooden background, which could
imply that the female singer is the group
leader or the main one. The cuts were
very fast however each character had a
close up their face with the same solemn
expression, therefore we were able to get
a good look at them.

3. The two different scenes of this music
video are also introduced before the
lyrics start, however instead of a close
up they are shown as a long shot. This
helps establish the scene so that the
audience can get a good look at the
scenery and background. It also
allows the audience to see who’s in
the shot, and in this case it is all the
close ups of the people shown before
except in the outdoor scene where
there seems to be a few more added
people. these cuts are slightly more
prolonged as there is more going on
in the shot, therefore allowing the
audience to see everything.

4. When the song starts with the lyrics there is
a large variety of close up shots available in
the performance scene of the singers faces.
These close ups seem to emphasize the
passion they feel towards the lyrics as we are
able to see their facial expressions more
clearly. Additionally, this heightens when
there is eye contact with the audience while
the female singer is singing as it seems as if
she is singing to the audience directly.
There is also a few, but not many close up
shots in the outdoor scene. Most of them
don’t feature amongst the different actors
and actresses faces but more towards the
naturalistic side e.g. the wildlife.

5. Whilst watching this music video I realised that
the outdoor scenes are cut much more slower
than the performance scenes. This may be
because once again, there is a lot of scenery
shown therefore the slow cuts allow the
audience to analyse everything more efficiently.
Additionally, the structure of this music video
goes in a order. it starts from the performance
scene then goes to the outdoors scene then
back to the performance scene and so on. This
order is carried on throughout the entire music
video which makes it predictable and the
audience knows what is coming next.