Analysis of music videos

Florence Welch, Stage Name - Florence and The machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise it up)

Rabbit Heart is the fourth single from Florence’s debut album Lungs, and reached 12th in the UK singles chart after being released on 22nd June 2009. The genre of the song is classified as indie pop on the music site last.fm and alternative in the iTunes music store.

The video is largely narrative based with florence singing in a field accompanied by a number of actors. A spiritual ritual appears to take place in the video, where Florence and the actors dance, food is thrown from a table to the floor and finally Florence is pushed out into a river in a floating coffin-like box in a way similar to a Biblical story. These spiritual themes relate directly back to the lyrics for instance the line “we raise it up, this offering, we raise it up” as well as the song’s chorus.

It starts off with an extreme close up of Florence’s mouth with the rest of her face covered by a piece of cloth. The camera then pans outwards as the cloth is lifted into a medium close up. This draws the audience’s attention to the opening lyrics of the song.

Close up of Florence singing.

Tracking close ups and medium close up’s are regularly used throughout the music video of Florence making her constantly the centre of the audience’s attention.

Close up of her singing the lyrics.

There is a clear ‘Golden Hour’ effect that has been done to give the video an old and rustic look while at the same time making it more subtle and giving the location a nicer ora.

As you can see, the clear difference from no Golden hour, above. To Golden hour, below.

Golden Hour Effect

As well as the Golden Hour effect being used, a high angle shot is also frequently used at the start o the video to add superiority to Florence.

Only one musical instrument from the song appears in the video. A man in a suit playing a harp appears intermittently creating a fairytale like scene fitting in with the lyrics and meaning of the song. One or two other instruments are used simply as props in the video to help the video relate to the meaning of the song.

The cutting rhythm of the song is slower than most music videos, but still relatively fast. This combined with the filter used on the camera and the occasional use of the fade transition gives the music video a dated appearance, as if to suggest that the ritual happening on screen used to happen, but no longer takes place.

A fade transition is effective here as the coffin floats off down the river to a close up of her face, showing her emotion.

She then closes her eyes and her face emotion looks like she is upset or tired, this then fades into black and finishes the song.

A number of extras appeared in the video, most notably at the end where Welch is carried towards the riverbank and pushed out onto the water. The extras make the ‘ceremony’ look like a joyous occasion as singing and dancing takes place in the background. In an interview for BBC Radio Florence confessed that her record label had asked for something more upbeat, and the use of these actors in the background help achieve this.

When she is being carried to the river in a coffin-like box.

The coffin as she is being lowered into the water.

While Rabbit Heart (Raise it up) wasn’t Florence’s first single, it was an important song as relatively new artist for the creation of her public image. The video helps to show Florence not as the typical female vocalist sex symbol, but as an artist passionate about writing interesting music and songs with peculiar videos to accompany them.

The guy in the top hat is feeding her grapes as though she is a queen, she isn't taking the grapes but giving the other guy attention instead, some voyeurism is shown here through the act of 'sexiness' which she is performing on the guy in the red blazer.

Throughout the song they start eating at a table with lots of old tudor food like pigs heads and lots of fruit and bread. This could be portraying the old time that it is meant to relate to.

They then go crazy and start chucking all the food off the table, this could show that they are free but could also relate to the lyrics just before they throw the food of the table "Before I make, the final sacrifice". The final sacrifice could be the ridding of the food, showing the reason why they chucked it all of the table; to make the final sacrifice. A sacrifice is something given to the gods or demons, maybe they were giving the final sacrifice to them buy giving them the food or maybe she was the final sacrifice and thats why she gave herself in the coffin.

Pig heads that were eaten and then sacrificed.

The music video.