Music Video Analysis - The Enemy

As this song is a similar genre to Kasabian’s ‘Processed Beats’ (Brit Rock) we found the video to be similar in the aspect of both music videos being mainly performance based. What separates the two videos is how ‘Had Enough’ has a much stronger narrative with Main characters played out by more than just Band Members like in ‘Processed Beats’.

Although ‘Had Enough’ has minimal post production editing effects we found the camera techniques rather advanced with a arrange of shots from simple close-ups of band members to more technical long ranged tracking shots which would have most likely been shot using a crane.These shots continue throughout the music video with simple close-ups and extreme close-up’s of band Members and their key props such as Liam Watts (Drummer) used his drumstick, Andy Hopkins (Bass) strummed and Tom Clarke (Guitar, Vocals) sang. Shots included the actors also had close-ups and extreme close-ups to help show the emotion the characters were feeling, these shots also helped give the narrative depth as they engaged the audience to what would otherwise be a shallow and tedious plot.

What we found different between this music video and Kasabian’s ‘Processed Beats’ was the use of camera angles, within this video we found that a token of low angled shots were used throughout the video in comparison. We felt this could be due to the locations used as they are all based on a working class estate.These vast amount of high camera angles were only used for the characters help increase the depth to the narrative as low angled shots give the audience the sense that the characters are inferior, this worked well with the plot of the video as main characters were made to look small. The editing was rather interesting within this music video as when being compared to ‘Processed Beats’ we found the editing to be at a basic standard. With simple cuts and little post production effects, the most advanced parts of editing involves getting the lip syncing correct as well as changing the rate of cuts (much faster rate of cuts when band members are performing when compared to narratives slow rate of cuts). We also felt the Mise-en-scene was very interesting as costume and location match the narrative exceedingly precisely as baseball caps, tracksuit bottoms and other similar clothing mixed with the locations of council estates really did help give the music video a deep sense of a working-class plot. This was also helped by the strong performances acted out within the narrative as well as the basic lighting of sunlight giving the music video an intense gritty feeling. This therefore is a music video which combines both narrative and performance. (location are similar for both narrative and performance)

The typical genre of this type of song (Brit Rock) is normally downbeat and based on social realism(definition) . ‘Had Enough’ follows suit in this case as both the performance and the narrative parts are based on working-class council estates. The narrative of the story is mainly based around a male aged around 17-25 as the video follows him around a day in his life involving his friends and generally things the protagonist would pursue throughout the day. Constant inter-cutting of the band performing and narrative was a common factor within ‘Had Enough’, the performance part takes place in similar surroundings to the narrative to show the bands relevance to the meaning of the song. 


Although performance is used regularly within the music video we found the narrative to be the main emphasis. Due to this we thought there was a strong narrative  when compared to Kasabian’s ‘Processed Beats’. It is for this reason that we found The Enemy’s ‘Had Enough’ an effective video with aspects of performance to support the strong narrative.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPTBu9hD57U&ob=av2n