Their final video release as a band, History offered us a bittersweet tribute to the 5 years building up to it. The best years of our life and the worst of theirs.
The opening shot, a black and white clip of the original 5 members stranding on the X Factor stage waiting to find out whether or not they're about to become a band. The rest of the first 17 seconds flip between a modern day (at the time) Harry singing into the camera and the series of events that followed it, them finding out they have been put together and their first hug as a band. For fans that have followed them from the beginning, just these few seconds of shots will have given them an extreme feeling of nostalgia - setting the tone for the rest of the video. Between Niall's vocal and shot dominance takeover, there is more clips of the boys in Black and White. The use of black and white is an intentional move from the directors in order to, not only differentiate between the past and present but also to, provoke an unspecified emotion in the audience. I say unspecified because some viewers will find the "throwback" shots happy and a celebration of their 5 years together and others will find them sad and a sign these times weren't the happy times they seemed to be. Either way, the use of black and white makes the rational "Directioner" emotional.
We see clips of them on set for music videos right through from 2010 - 2015. these are significant because, unlike most of the footage being unseen clips, these will be recognisable for fans and add to that element of nostalgia. For example, this one shot shows the band during shooting for their first album so by putting this reference to the first album they released in the final single from their final album, it is really tying together the fact that this is the end of One Direction.
The use of old footage isn't just to make audiences feel nostalgic but also to show us how far the band have come, not just in musical maturity but, in physical appearance. All of them were teenagers when they were first thrust into the spotlight and here we have 4 lads in their early 20s looking back on the past 5 years of their growth that the world got to watch along with them, the transition from teenagers (Harry being the youngest, 16 at the time of X Factor) to adults is quite a significant period in anybody's life but the stark contrast, of their baby faces to the "now" of the time, is really highlighted by the jump from the shot (in what we can only assume is a warehouse of some sort) to the 5 year old footage.
The first chorus ("you and me got a whole lot of history") is preceded by clips of these friendships within the band in the early days, setting us up to know that the aforementioned line is about each other and this song is a complete reflection of the time in the band and their relationships with each other within that time. What is interesting to see in this video is that all the footage (time appropriate) still has Zayn in it. Not a suggestion that he should have been edited out in some deranged effort to erase his time in the band but with everything that was said after he left the band, that he never really enjoyed his time there and wasn't close with any of them, some might say this was a cover up of how unhappy the experience made, not just Zayn but, all the boys.
Liam has also come out and spoken about his mental health struggles while a part of One Direction and it doesn't take much to see that they're all much happier pursuing solo careers and having complete control over what they can say and do.
Another nod to Zayn in the video is the shots in which we see ot5 walking together in an early music video quickly replaced with ot4 in a more recent one all while the lyric being sung is "I realised that without you here, life is just a lie." Representative of the hole that many felt after Zayn announced his departure.
The target audience (One Direction fans or "Directioners") will feel involved in the music video, not only because of the "throwback" footage of eras that they will remember and the fact it shows the boys essentially growing up but, because of the direct address. When we see the in-colour shots from 2015 where the band are in a warehouse, they are singing and looking directly down the camera. This physical direct address along with the lyric address "YOU and me" will make audiences feel like it is them that has the history with One Direction, like they are a part of this. Cleverly, One Direction have left both the lyrics and video open for interpretation as we're never explicitly told whether they have history with each other or us and whether the intermittent montage is a nod to the journey they have taken their fans on over the past 5 years or the journey they have taken together (to get to a position where they're ready to go their separate ways and launch solo careers).
Binary Oppositions are used in this music video through the technical codes. The first of which being the use of colour, or therefore lack of. The music video uses black and white to show to make the old clips stand out more and really bring home that change between then and now. In colour theory, black is evil and white is good, the use of the filter could be a message of the mixed emotions about One direction and it being over. A mixed bag of emotions and, regardless of how they feel about it, knowing that everything is going to be different now One Direction is finished. Because of the dullness of the black and white filter, when the shot moves back to the boys singing to us, it feels almost more fresh, the colour seems brighter and it just generally feels more in the moment and more pleasant. The second technical code that is a use of Binary Oppositions is the use of the camera. On the majority of the shots of 'the past,' the camera stays pretty still as if it is just an observation - somebody looking in on/at One Direction and their career. Whereas the camera often zooms in and out on the 'present day' band, often either side of the black and white clips, I think this is symbolic of perspective and the zooming in/out is the director changing out perspective on the band - hence why it comes before and after.
The majority of this video does use conventions that we would expect a music video to use but there is this one part which, I think, sits somewhere in between typical and atypical. In the video we can see that for what Louis sings, there is a directly relevant clip to accompany it. Although in music videos, we do see images/videos etc linked to the lyrics we hear, we do not tend to see the footage to be exactly what is being said for the duration of the line. It seems so unusual and yet so expected at the same time.
The music video for History was released January 26th 2016, 5 months after One Direction announced their indefinite hiatus. The music video ended pretty perfectly, all context considered. The final black and white clip we see is of their last performance as a band and their final group hug, accompanied by the lyric "we can live forever," this really feels like the right way to end their career as a band. Starting the video with their first performance and first hug and ending it with their last performance and last huge - tying together the entire 5 years. We then come back to the present day for the final shot where we see all four members go off in different directions - signifying the start of their careers as solo artists. That final transition from black and white to colour really making such a huge difference when you consider what they're there to represent, the black and white being One Direction and the colour being, regardless of what Louis tries to tell us, the end.
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