Advanced Portfolio Homework task. Submission Friday October 3rd

Nina Collins

Music video- Sia Chandelier

In the music video ‘chandelier’ there is only one character, a young girl with a short blonde wig on and a nude coloured leotard. The stereotype of a young girl usually is associated with the horror genre or a very strange character in a film, this music video has the same representation as she is acting very strange and gives

the music video an edge. The girl is clearly a dancer, shot in a grungy, largely empty run-down apartment with strange drawings. The girl is meant to be a young Sia who is the singer of this song. As the song and the lyrics about wanting to hang from the chandelier and not being able to wait until the night, the young girl dances throughout the apartment in a manic modern way that are both extraordinary and disturbing.  She stops to pretend to eat in a way that is pantomime

like, with a dead-eyed stare, and then continues her dance movements throughout the apartment.

The whole narritive of the video is about addiction. It is showing the girl dancing as if she has mental issues and from start to finish this doesn’t change. The end shot is the

girl waving and then she curtseys 3 times which is saying ‘enter the addiction if you dare’. There is no start middle and end to this video as it is the same situation throughout as she is on drugs or alcohol. Due to the girl being so young it makes the video all the more contriversal.

The photographs that are dotted about the abandoned apartment are a representation of the video, there is one image that is hand drawn by a really young child and the others are strange images of people, the apartment itself is like the addict, it

is abandonded, strange, cluttered and disorganised. Everything in the apartment is quite plane which shows that the addict is quite small minded however the strange images show the interesting thing in their lives which is alcohol.

The video is filmed without edits, there are single shots that follow the girl into different rooms. The dancing is remarkable but so is the sensation the girl gives of just barely being in control as her feelings begin to overwhelm her to where she is, literally, at times crawling up the walls.   It’s haunting and eerie and compelling. Due to the continuity editing and

Advanced Portfolio Homework task. Submission Friday October 3rd

mainly long shots it proves that the addicts mind is a one way system and when they have the alcohol there is no stopping. There is quite low key lighting which makes the video all the more eerie and strange.There is no diegetic sound it is just the non diegetic music. The character in the video doesnt mime once, this makes it very obvious that no diegetic sound was intended.

In conclusion the video is very strange and eerie. It is about an alcohol addict who is expressing their feelings, this is shown through the props which is the apartment itself and the photos in the apartment, also by the camera techniques, there is very little cuts and a lot of long shots. The video has no diegetic sound which proves that the girl is nothing to do to with the singer or the reasoning behind the video.