RESEARCH: Deconstruction

‘Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for

boy/girl band.)’Straight away the establishing shot shows the main characteristic of singer songwriter genre. Johnny Cash is shown to be central to the audience’s vision. Cash is also playing a guitar; playing the guitar or piano is the stereotype associated with this genre. At 35:00 seconds a close up shot of a piano is shown, then at 41:00 the audience is shown that Cash is playing the piano.

Throughout the whole of Cash’s music video the sole focus is on him and his personal life and battles. This is the main characteristic of this genre to have the singer as the main focus.

From my genre research I found out that a key characteristic is for the artist to be singing about heart break or confessions. Here Cash is shown to be expressing heart ache, the audience is being shown this through close ups of Johnny Cash looking straight down the camera and his body language throughout the video.

‘There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).’

‘You could have it all, My empire of dirt’ Here the lyrics suggest that Cash is regretting parts of his life, these lyrics are matched with old footage of his performances and footage of awards. The footage of the awards is being suggested that they are in a museum. Originally we were shown a mid shot of a sign which read ‘House Of Cash Museum’ This suggests that the museum holds his empire, which is being suggested are broken.

‘Everyone I know, Goes away in the end’ This suggests that Cash feels he is missing people, here the visuals show a table filled with food which is suggesting a relationship between missing family and friends. Another visual shown during these lyrics if a photograph of a lady, this suggests that she is who Cash is missing.

‘There is a relationship between music and visuals (illustrative, amplifying, and contradicting).’

There is on beat editing used when Cash plays the piano at 0:58 seconds. On beat editing is also used at 01:26 where we are shown a long shot of a room of Johnny Cash Memorabilia. With every other strum of the guitar the shot changes to a close up of the different items of memorabilia.

‘The demands of the record label will include the will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop

motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).’

This music video shows several close ups of Cash, it starts with a close up of his face to show the artist to the audience. There are other close ups throughout the video which are advertising Cash and his work to the audience. The video shows a lot of old performance footage and past videos of Cash. Also close ups are used at 01:34, here we see close ups of Cash’s memorabilia. One piece of this is a broken framed record. These close ups are not only being used to advertise him as an artist but are also telling the message in the song with broken images.

‘There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos ect).’

In Cash’s video it makes reference using a montage to past performances by him and past music videos. One of the main features of this music video is showing Cash’s life and therefore lots of stage footage of Cash is shown.