Rock Video Analysis - Queen

MISE-EN-SCENE/ PERFORMANCE

As it first first of all starts off with a typical, old-fashion, spooky set-up, we think that we have seen something like this before, until Freddie Mercury appears to be styled as some sort of magician. As he walks into an abandoned theatre, he uses powers to change homeless people into the rest of the band members of Queen before then too changing his own clothing. Afterwards, Queeen begin to follow typical rock conventions of a music video by performing live on stage within the abandoned theatre, playing instruments and lip-synching throughout. By wearing sunglasses indoors and suiting crazy haircuts,  this too supports this.  As Mercury leaves the theatre, everything starts to go back to normal. The band's performance throughout is very positive and uplifting, linking in with the song, especially within vocal and instrumental solos. Mercury uses a lot of facial and body expressions whilst performing too to signify that he is very passionate about what he is singing, but also that he is a very powerful human being, capturing the audiences attention and making them almost believe that he'd be capable of the magic he's doing in the video. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The band are generally shown through low angles, giving them a very strong persona throughout after being transformed from tramps to stars. The camerawork does vary a lot throughout, showing match on action shots of Mercury performing as well as a sudden change from mid-shots to extreme close-ups of other members performing. This is so it looks like a live performance trying to cover everyone playing at once.It also makes them look exciting and fun to watch. This is a very typical convention of rock videos as it promotes the band and makes fans want to see them live. You can tell that a lot of planning and preparation had taken place before shooting for post-production too as Mercury is often placed in rule-of-third shots so that they could then add animation in with him. Whips and track pans also add to the live effect.

EDITING

There are frequent visual effects used in the video which signify the magic coming from Mercury. These turn to create backing dancers for Queen within the video too. Throughout the video, all cartoon images and sparks move to the beat of the music. Also, the pace of the editing is very quick and keeps to the beat of the song. This is so they can show a vast amount of shots in a short space of time, so you can see all elements of the performance as well as being able to add in cutaways of the venue/magic easily. Within the video, some parts are sped up and slowed down as well as being superimposed to link in with the magic aspect.