Music Video Deconstruction 8

Song: Early Grave
Band: Architects
Year: Late 2008/Early 2009

• Architects are an English hardcore band from Brighton, England, formed in 2004.
• Architects was founded in 2004 and are currently signed to Century Media Records worldwide and Distort Entertainment in Canada. The band has toured the UK and Europe with bands such as Bring Me the Horizon,SikTh and The Chariot. They have played at a number of independent UK festivals, as well as the Download Festival 2007 and 2009, and Sonisphere 2009 and 2011.
• The song "Early Grave" is taken from the band's 2009 album, Hollow Crown. This was the last album considered to be a typical Architects record before they vastly changed and revamped their sound with the 2011 album, The Here And Now, which takes a much more radio-rock turn as opposed to their conventional tech-metal sound, employing the use of intricate guitar and drum lines and specialist methods of guitar playing. 
• Early Grave is the first single off Hollow Crown, with a second single, Follow The Water, released later on.
• The most striking thing about the video for Early Grave is the way it is shot in ALL black and white, there is absolutely no colour.
• The video begins with absolutely no sound; there are a few shots to open the video, and the first of which starts the narrative for the video, as it is performance and narrative based.
• The band start playing the song suddenly, so it is quite shocking and jumps out at you/
• The style of shooting is immediatly recognizable; it is shot by a hand-held camera, and you can easily tell due to the constant shaking and moving about.

• There are also lots of zoom shots too, especially when Sam (Carter) starts the vocals of the track, as the camera focuses on him.
• This is also where the narrative begins; there is a masked man who is shown walking around the cityscape, seemingly lost and alone. He wears a suit and a bandage around his whole head; this may be reminiscent (or just a coincidence) of the Funeral For a Friend video I deconstructed earlier. 
• The band are often shown also from quite a distance while playing, and often a panoramic shot featuring the whole band using a long shot.
• Once again, this is another video that has a great deal of quick transitions and editing, between members of the band and the band themselves, and the man in the narrative, who is often depicted in long shots and close ups.
• The makers of the video used a special technique for filming the drums; there was a camera and monitor mounted on a chair next to the Dan (drums) and it was remotely operated with a joystick, and the operator zoomed in and out extremely fast. 
• It may be interesting to note at this point that Adam Powell, the director if this video, often works with bands such as Architects, including Bring Me the Horizon, Johnny Truant and Young Guns.
• At this point, the man in the narrative has put on a mask and wrapped it around his head; giving the character an extremely creepy feel. He is often looked at in these scenes through close ups so you can see his "face" more clearly.
• There is a constant continuation of switches from performance to narrative; the performance shots are never more than a second long, whereas the narrative often stays in the same shot for more than a few seconds, but not long enough to become boring. 
• After a while you begin to notice that the man in the narrative is totally alone in the video, there are no other people at all. This is acts as a metaphor for the message of the song.
• There are a few bizarre moments where, during long shots, the performance cut changes angles, such as being shown upside-down or to the side, which is rather unconventional. 
• Once the melodic part of the song begins, the narrative pace changes, and the man is shown sprinting through a forest; this is done with a handheld camera as well, and it changes the atmosphere of the video and song as it is more uplifting.
• For the performance at this part, a lot of mid-shot low angles are used to show Sam, who is doing clean vocals for the first time in the song and therefore needs the focus. 
• The heaviest part of the song, the end, begins and the man is seen at a high angle, signifying weakness and failure, taking off his bandages, yet a narrative enigma is created when the face is not shown. The performance is focused on Tom (lead guitar) at this point as he is the only one playing in the beginning. The video ends with a spiralling high angle shot of the man zooming out, and the band fading into darkness.