Florence and the Machine – What Kind Of Man

‘What Kind Of Man’ is chapter one from the concept album ‘How big how blue how beautiful’ by Florence and the machine. Throughout the video there’s a lot

of medium and long shots to show the full performance as it includes a lot of dance. This is an

average amount of shots for the type of music vide as of it being indie rock, a lot of the time the metronome

of the pieces changes. The shots change at the different beats – this isn’t repetitive though as the

shot lengths change throughout. To begin with there is medium shots of a couple from behind in a car,

these are long paced shots as there is dialect and a storyline to follow. There’s the use of cutaways of scenes, which the music video keeps going back to

throughout the full thing. These shots include a two shot showing the couple as dusk with the city behind them and you can see faintly a storm in the distance. There’s the use of a medium close up and this comes

up quite frequently to show a conversation in the car; there’s shot of just Florence and the man. There are

then long shots slowing zooming in of the couple in a room, one sat on the bed and the other sat down, which start to unwind the narrative. Another key

shot is a high angle looking down onto the two people showing the room and the storm on TV/ news. This

may be to symbolise the destruction within their relationship and foreshadow the storm in them and around them. By using the high angle, this may be to symbolise how very little power they have over their fate. There’s then a previous shot of the

couple on the balcony, which moves towards the two making it a medium close up shot. This is then followed by the shots from earlier in the car, medium shots showing the couple conversing in a car. Using these close ups and medium shots, you are able to feel like you know what they

are talking about, making you feel engaged and involved in the video. This also helps you identify their emotion and see their body language for each other.

Within the dancing scenes there’s the use of a lot of long shots slowly zooming out and tracking the lead dancers moves. Sometimes there’s the use of quick pan shots to show the room and the

different moves around the room. The moving camera allows us to see every dance move and see the body language, which they use. It feels like it’s being hand held to show the emotion of

the dance which connects the lyrics and the video.

There’s the use of the cross cut throughout the video showing the different shots with different storylines. All the different clips relate to her other videos making it feel like a concept album.

The average shot is around 5 seconds however to begin with the shots are around 30 seconds long. In the dancing scenes the shots last around 8/10 seconds long.