Rihanna refers to herself in the lyrics as being like a “murder” the dark moody image has been portrayed throughout this video through the use of dark dull lighting and filters. The song is also quite slow paced with a playing of a piano, this links in very well with the sadness moody feel to the video. At the start of the video we see Rihanna in very extreme close up shots of sections of her body to promote herself, and also show us the long black dress she is wearing which makes her look like a very intelligent sophisticated woman. There are also some low angle shots. She also looks perfectly done up with her makeup hair etc which gives me the impression that she takes a lot of pride in herself however, whilst this is showing we heart a heart beat in the background which shows she may be possibly scared or panicking. She looks in the mirror at herself and we then have jump cuts and cut aways to a scene where she is sat with a man in a restaurant. We see the close in close ups and long shots. We then get a few past paced jump cuts to different scenes in which she is with the same man however she is wearing different clothing which is typical of a R&B/pop genre. I think the fast paced jump cut technique looks really effective and I think it would look good to use in our music video.
At no point in the video does Rihanna show signs of natural happy expressions, her face looks very sad and nervous and the smiles she pulls almost look false and forced out. We also get a feel that a hand held camera has been used at times to give a “shaken” effect which could symbolise her relationship as if it is on the rocks.
The whole video carries on quite dark with the black curtains etc which has been deliberately put there to create more impact within the video. There are also some shots of Rihanna which fade out to black which I think look really effective. There have also been some long shots of her lying across a piano which shows her very weak and vulnerable side not like the “sophisticated” image we portrayed of her before. Looking at the rest of the video we see Rihanna in a different clothes change, which is typical for the genre and also would be a good idea to use in our music video. We see her wearing white clothing which symbolises innocence and purity which is very ironic as this is not the case as we can tell from the narrative of the story or suggests she is feeling some form of guilt. She is also pictured wearing red clothing which also symbolises love and passion which again has been deliberately chosen as a “false” image.
The young black man in the video is not portrayed in the way that black males are portrayed in a stereotypical R&B music video. Instead of wearing “hoodies” and gold chains etc he is wearing very different clothing, quite basic and also looks like he takes a lot of pride in himself.
Looking at “Goodwins Analysis” there is a massive relationship between lyrics and visuals as Rihanna acts out the song with in the video so we get a clear image of what is being portrayed. There are also a lot of close ups of her face to promote herself so that the artist can develop motifs and there are no intertextual references to films, tv programmes and other music videos.
Over all Rihanna’s video is a very typical video for this genre. Although I like watching the video and also the genre of the song we decided not to use this for are music video as we thought using this typical love pop song narrative would be too much alike to we are deciding on something a lot different.
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