Tom Grennan’s music video for his one of his most popular songs “how does it feel” is an amazing example of a performance style music video which incorporates light elements of narrative as well as performance.
To start off the video meets all the hallmarks of a performance music video with the whole video being made up of clips from a concert with Tom performing. These parts of the video make use of various types of shots all in a short period of time, close ups, medium close up, middle shots, long shots, over the shoulder shots and more, these shots aren’t just of Tom but of multiple members of the adoring crowd and his bandmates, doing that in a short period of time as mentioned earlier creates a sense of speed and excitement fitting of a concert portraying Tom as a grand performer with adoring fans, larger than life I would say. But as mentioned the video goes beyond just that and intersperses the video with multiple clips of Tom backstage both before and after the concert. These clips only make use of close-up shots with no shot going beyond medium long shot and only focus on Tom with no quick cuts to others which creates a sense of intimacy with Tom as you see him backstage before the concert, with Toms facial expression clearing showing he’s worried about the concert the clips being interspersed with clips of the incredibly successful concert show that despite his nerves it went very well. The best example io have for this is the opening 10 seconds. We with a medium close up on Tom establishing that previously mentioned sense of intimacy as he makes direct eye contact with the viewer, he looks worried and conflicted. Because of the sense of intimacy created between Tom and the viewer they are encouraged to feel empathy so the viewer also feels the worry that Tom feels, it creates a sense of tension, according to Barthes codes this would be an enigma code, it asks the question of “will the concert go well?” only for the action code of Tom performing his heart out and the crowd going wild to clearly answer that question, that the concert went very well and Tom succeed and because of the empathy that the viewer feels when Tom is triumphant the viewer feels the same.
Comments