For my second pop music video analysis I decided to take a look at Justin Timberlake's 'Mirrors'. I chose this music video because I felt it didn't portray all the stereotypical conventions that a pop music video should. This video follows a narrative rather than having the artist perform live. At the beginning of the video we do not get introduced to the main artist and instead we follow the stories of some other characters which are not familiar to the audience. In fact, we do not get introduced to the artist until we are 5 minutes and 45 seconds in. When we are introduced to him, we get a stereotypical performance as he dances around what seems to be a set of mirrors. From previous looks at Justin Timberlake's videos, I can see a pattern as he dances in the majority if not all of them.
Up until this point because we have not seen the artist, the video hasn't been able to stick to the stereotypical convention that the artist will lip synch. Just after we have seen the long shot of the artist performing a dance for us, we get an over the shoulder mid shot of him lip synching into one of the many mirrors. At one point he makes contact with the audience by looking directly into the camera.
By performing in front of a mirror, it makes it almost look like there is two different people within the shot. This is a simple but clever effect that doesn't cause for any high end editing software. This is an idea that I could see as being effective enough to use within my own music video.
Going back to the beginning of the video, some more conventions are met. As it is following more than one story within the video the characters are seen in more than one location. At one point however, both stories are intertwined together as a lady gives the younger couple a picture booth photo strip of the older couple who we keep going back too. This gives us another hint as to what is going on within the story.
The different locations that are seen within this video:
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