Green Day - When I Come Around

The video uses amplacation because the shots match the beat of the song and are in sync with the music. The characters in the video have different storylines which lead on from one another, so the video uses a multi-strand narrative.

The music video for ‘When I Come Around’ basically shows different people and how these people contrast each other. The video does this by the camera focusing on one individual, then you see a point-of-view shot of what this person is looking at, which is the next person in the sequence and so-on. This carry’s on until you see the same person that you see at the beginning of the video looking through a window.

At the beginning of the video, establishing shots show were the video is set. You see the rooftops of high buildings, implying the video is set in a city or a large town. The same long shots are used at the end of the video to imply that the song has done a ‘full circle’ almost. The video is also set in the night time so artificial lighting is used throughout the video for mise-en-scene. Tracking medium long shots are used to follow the band members walking through the streets. However you notice that the front man of the band Billie Joe is shown to be in front of the other two band members most of the time. This could be considered to be a MEAT shot also as you see the lead singer closer up.

Cut Zoom Ins are used a lot in the video to gradually show you each person. This is mixed with cross-cutting so that you don’t just see one person then another straight away without not seeing the person the camera was originally focusing on again. Fade outs and fade ins are used for transitions in the video as the action goes from the band walking to the couple walking up the steps to a hotel or apartment.

The band members in the video are wearing very casual, almost untidy clothing showing you that they don’t really care about there appearence necessarily. However the actual characters in the video are wearing contrasting clothing to each other. As one man in the video is wearing a dressing gown, and then the next person the camera focuses on is a woman wearing a suit and a hat, this is so the characters are juxtaposed between each other.

Crane shots are used in the video to follow the person the camera is focusing on at the time. For example the camera focuses on the man wearing the dressing gown in the room with the woman sitting on the couch. The camera then seems to move over the couch following the man to window.

As the solo begins in the song the pace of the video changes as the editing become quicker and you see a point-of-view shot from a person sitting in a car. The time at this point in the video has also been speeded up to match the fast pase of the song.