"Nightwish - Bye Bye Beautiful" Denotation

Artist: Nightwish

Song Title: Bye Bye Beautiful

Year: 2008

Director: Antii Jokinen

Genre: Metal

Primary Audience: 15-34

Actual band

Models in place of male members

This music video is solely performance, with only one location being used, however there are two seperate performance scenarios, one with models acting as the band (apart from the vocalist who appears in both scenarios), and one with the actual band performing. Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze comes into play here, as the models replacing the male band members are young attractive women wearing revealing clothing, this is obviously a key aspect of the video, as on the youtube embedded video at the bottom of this post the top rated comment sums up the video as "Hot Girls in HD!" The metal genre of the band is conveyed from the very start of the video through aspects of mise-en-scene such as the big drum kit and the band member's dark clothing. Something that appears glaringly obvious throughout the video is the bright light coming from the back of the performance room, which leaves the whole set in an orange tint. The song title and lyrics in "Bye Bye Beautiful" refers to the band's old fired vocalist, and she is being represented through the models in the video.

Multiple video layers

The whole intro and first verse of the video has the models (and vocalist) on the instruments, and the scene only changes to the actual band performing at the first chorus, when just before (at 0:58 - 1:01) there is quick cross-cutting back and forth from one shot of the actual drummer and one of the model who is on the drums, before cutting back to a long shot showing the actual band performing at 1:02. During the chorus there is frequent use of multiple video layers being used to quickly flash extra images of the band members, such as at 1:06. This is something that we can use ourselves when editing our own coursework music video, as multiple video layers is a feature of final cut, the software that we are going to be editing with. During the bridge section of the video (2:55) there are frequent slow motions close up/medium close up shot of the individual band members/models.