Written: Toby Gad, Kerl Kolv, Lindy Robbins
Director: Toby Gad
genre: Pop, R&B,
structure: Ballad, abstract
The music video opens with an establishing shot of a white dessert with a road marked in the middle. This kind of contradicts the song title, as the ideology of the audience would expect it to be in a city or crowded area as it’s called “skyscraper” and the song is based on ‘a picture of the apocalypse, in which the world was in ruins, and among collapsed buildings, one skyscraper was still standing’, and so when the opening of the music video shows a lonely, empty dessert.
A slow edit cut, cuts from different scenery shots and then to a close up of Demi’s face. Mise-en-scene shows her with tears in her eyes and a sad face, so straight away you can tell that the mood of the video is sad and you can establish the genre of soul ballad and pop. The narrative begins to develop as diegetic sound is played and the lyrics basically describe a bad relationship with a lover.
A slow cut edit shoots to a mid shot of Demi holding her arm across her stomach. This could show insecurity or maybe represent “gut wrenching” pain, which is showing the pain of her mental abuse in the relationship.
Mise-en-scene shows Demi wearing a white, floaty dress. This colour represents innocence and pure feelings. It is also a protagonist colour representing that the lyrics are about an ex boyfriend or an antagonistic character which demonstrates Levi Strauss idea of Binary opposites. (Always a good to a bad person). This again also exaggerates the narrative.
The Editing is really slow at the beginning again representing the narrative and chosen genre of soul ballad. A shot then shows the clouds with a mountain in the background representing the height of a skyscraper, and then mise-en-scene shows a heart in a glass box. Glass is fragile and so shows that her heart is kept in a thin, fragile box and later on shows the glass broken again developing the narrative, and the stereotypical view of girls and getting there hearts broken.
Diegetic sound show’s Demi singing the lyrics of “go on and try to tear me down, I will be rising from the ground, like a skyscraper”. Cinematography links with sound by showing a low angled shot making Demi look really tall again exaggerating the lyrics.
When she sings “skyscraper” she lifts her arms straight above her head and then grabs her hands together, this exaggerates the length of her body and also could be seen as demonstrating a skyscraper. A zoom in is used to exaggerate how powerful the song gets.
As the song develops, mise-en-scene shows a black long cloth wrapped around Demi. This could be the “male” figure she sings about as black is antagonistic colour and could represent the evil. In another way it could represent the place she was in and as it blows away is represents how strong she ha got and how she’s moving onto other things.
Three quarters of the way through the music video, it starts to get quicker and the editing gets quicker exaggerating the power and strength of Demi again showing what she said happened to her when she was recording the song.
“When recording it in 2010, Demi was very emotional which triggered outbursts and caused her to start crying. Later the same year, she entered a treatment facility to deal with her personal struggles. After finishing it in early 2011, she re-recorded the song, but kept the original recording as she felt that it was "symbolic" to her. According to Demi, the song represents the journey she had been on the previous year. The lyrics speak of staying strong and believing in oneself.”
The narrative develops and basically shows how strong she is getting and how she no longer needs love.
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