Analysis of music video - Snow Patrol, Take Back The City

This is the music video for Snow Patrol's Take Back The City, a single from their fifth album, A Hundred Million Suns. the csong is about Gary Lightbody. the lead singer and vocalist, love for Belfast. The video was shot in the London Docklands and East London. It was directed by Alex Courtes who also directed The White Strips' Seven Nation Army. This is an amplification video with creative narrative and performance shots. 

Like in most Snow Patrol music videos, Gary is the main focus of the video and the other band members only usually come in during performance shots. At the beginning, other band members feature after the introduction of new guitar riff at 0:51, which shows how they are adding to the music, establishing the roles of the band members and building up the narrative as the music increases.



The use of editing is very effective in this music video as the stop motion fits to the beat and rhythm of the song. The cuts become quicker as the music gets faster at 1:00 whereas at the beginning when the music was slower the separate frames had been held longer which made the cutting slower. This is quite effective to get the audience used to the stop motion technique as if it had been quick cutting from the beginning it might have been a bit off putting.



Within the stop motion there can be more experiment with cuts and the continuity doesn't have to look exactly right, for example during the shots of the city the frames aren't exactly straight from previous shots and the angles change. However in stop motion this can look quite effective and the audience would not question it. The editing of the video makes it more interesting to watch especially the effects made by the layering photographs at 0:28 looks quite effective with Gary moving through the frames.

The twisting moving skyscraper creates an interesting effect as the cuts match the beat of the music.

The lighting in this video contrasts well with the dark surroundings of the night sky and dark buildings. In the shots of the band performing there is a bright, white coloured back light which shows the contrast between the darker city shots and the performance. The backlight gives the image of a stage performance.