Oh Wonder - Without You Analysis

Camera, Editing, Mise-En-Scene
This music video is a combination between a narrative and lip-sync video. The video starts off with a narrative clip of the male singer waking up form the ground. The titles are shown on this clip introducing the title of the song. The camera then pans down from looking at the sky onto the building showing the subject on the floor. The slow pan of the city and sky, suggest the mood and genre of the song making the visuals relate to the song. As they are lying on the floor, it suggests that they are waking up, and not knowing where they are. As they 'wake up' in unusual places suggests that something before happened making the viewer question what is going on. The long shot of the male singer, shows him wake up from the roof of the building. The following shot shows the female singer doing the same actions, waking up from a cobble street road. As the female singer gets up from the cobble road, her actions moving up, match with the notes played in the song, emphasising the song and linking it with the visuals. The mise-en-scene in the shot is quite busy due to the cars being parked on both sides of the street. Therefore this can related and be an example of a busy street in a city. Both singers wear mainly black clothing in the narrative shots where as in the performance scenes they wear the appropriate colour clothing for the backdrop as shown in the next shot. Due to the colour black having a typical negative connotation suggests can foreshadow that they have to find each other in order to sort out the situation. Also the colour can connote the unknown as the viewer does note know why they have woken on a roof and a cobble street.

As the singing starts the clip then cuts to a performance clip of the two singing. The scene is very minimal with both singers wearing full pink, with also being in a full pink room. The colour pink connotes friendship, affection and harmony. These connotations suggest the personality of the female singer due to the focus being on her in this shot. This is due to the positioning, depth of field, focus and lighting. Positioning is key in this shot, as the female singer is in front of the male looking away from him. This emphasises to the viewer that she is singing and wants us to focus on her words. As the male singer is in the background, with less light on his face, can also tell us that she is singing about him. The use of pink also suggests that we should focus on her words, as it is a stereotypically feminine colour. Also she is in focus unlike the male singer adding more evidence that we should be focusing on her. The camera then pans round which then has a focus pull to get both singers in focus. After this is done the depth of field has become much shallower making them both in focus. Due to the shot being warm also suggests the feeling and emotion of the performers, and the performance. Due the narrative shots being colder and not much vibrance in colour contrasts with these shots making the viewer realise that they are important and help to get the emotion of the song across to the viewer.

The video keeps cutting back and fourth from narrative to performance. This shot shows us the whole city that they are walking through. the shot uses a fish eye lens to get this curved effect nearer the corners of the frame. This makes smaller spaces look bigger. This can connote that they have long journey in the narrative to find each other as they are singing about each other. There is a lot of contrast between the narrative shots and the performance. The lip-synced shots are very uniform in terms of colour and layout. Whereas the narrative shots are just typical cityscape shots.

The colours then change to a stereotypically more masculine green colour. Some of the connotations of green match the pink ones. Things such as growth, harmony and freshness. These match the connotation with the colour pink. These connotations can be applied to his personality due to him being the focus in the shot. This particular colour (green with blue) has connotations of emotional healing and protection. This can be applied to his personality in the song as the man has to stereotypically protect her. The positioning has switched so the male character is in front of the female making us listen to his voice instead of hers. This shot uses the same ideas as the other pink shot, use of focus pulls, lighting, depth of field, etc. The shots keep switching between the pink and green, making us focus on all of the words sung by both singers. This shot also contrasts the vibrance of the narrative shots, but due to it being green, makes it colder which can therefore signify the feeling and emotion of the singers. This then contrasts the pink shot of the focus on the female character.



These two shots both contrast each other in the direction the are facing. As a viewer they can predict that the are heading towards each other as they are facing opposite directions. They both follow the rule of thirds and the backgrounds are quite dull. The shot with the female is on a canted angle making the viewer believe that there is something wrong. This suggests that they are not safe yet. Also the background has more going on that the other shot as it is just all black. The singers are stereotypically dressed appropriately for the genre and mood of the music. The shots are cut quite fast together switching between the two perspectives in time with the beat of the music. This can suggest that they are getting closer and closer to each other until they meet. The connotation of black suggest the unknown and make us question whether what they are doing on this 'journey'.

In the next shot the camera shows both singers walking towards each other. The camera starts to zoom out to show the whole perspective and so you can see both singers. The shots before don't math with the direction of this shot disturbing thee viewer and make thing think that something is wrong, as they walk in different directions. As they meet it is synced with the music and the lyrics showing they have found each other in the narrative. This is linked to the vocals of the song and is an appropriate scene for the time in the song. The two then go and walk of towards the set where they are going to perform all linking with the artists, where their logo is shown. This is to promote the band finish the whole song off.