Music Video Analysis- Selena Gomez- Who Says

This music video is taken from a pop artist called Selena Gomez. Her target audience are teenage girls and this is apparent in this music video. The music video includes both narrative and performance and they are usually combined so she is singing during narrative scenes. The song is about seeing what is beautiful within each other and not listening to those who say you are not worthy. The song has a very important message which is carried through to the music video. The song is very upbeat and positive and the music video is fast paced with a lot of editing on the beat. One example of editing on the beat is at the beginning of the video where there is a strong beat and the shot changes to one very similar to the previous one...

 This is not fast paced editing on the best but instead focuses on the strong back beat at the beginning. I believe that this fits with Andrew Goodwin's theory of what is happening in the music video to fit with the music. The shot changes shows the beat and therefore there is a connection
between the music and video.



There is also a shot where Selena is walking and there are jump cuts to show a close up of her feet and her face and then there is a medium length shot of her upper body as she walks and performs. This shot also sets the location  for the music video as a busy American city this can be seen behind her.

There is also a shot where Selena is walking and there are jump cuts to show a close up of her feet and her face and then there is a medium full length shot of her whole body as she walks down the street singing.

As she drives around the city she sees important messages on signs and painted onto buildings. This seems to stick with the message of the song. The words are taken from different signs and then they are put together using split screens to show them as one phrase...

This once again fits with the message of the song and also these are edited on the beat. The picture on the left appears first then the middle picture then the right hand picture. They appear on the underlying beat of the song which is played by string instruments (violin/cello).  This happens for all three of the sentences. However, they do not happen straight after each other but there are performance shots in between.

At the beginning of the music video, the location is a photography studio where the artist is being photographed. Then the location changes to the street in a busy American city. She travels around the city in a taxi looking for signs with messages. There are also locations which are just the sides of buildings with messages written onto them. For example one say 'Beautiful since 92' which is the year the artist was born in. Another location seems to be a bathroom which is very plain where the artist takes of her makeup. Then the final location is a beach where the singer performs with her band. The music video only focuses on one location where Selena is at a  time and does not jump cut between the scenes. The narrative seems to be a journey to where she is performing at the end of the music video. The mise-en-scene for the music video is very different for each location. The first location (photography studio) is very dull and boring with a grey colour palette. Whereas the street location is very colourful and busy to show that the artist is happier. The beach location is very bright and has a very warm colour palette (orange, pink yellow). All of these colours have connotations for happiness and this is a perfect way to end the upbeat happy song.

The music video has very little still shots. The camera is always moving and unsteady. I have found that this is a classic convention of music video as the camera moves with the artist instead of the artist performing to a still camera.