Regina Spektor - Better - Video Analysis

Regina Spektor is an artist with similarities to Ruth Bewsey (the artist for my music video) therefore I thought it would be interesting to analyse the representation of a similar artist. This video for better is interesting in the way that it doesn’t objectify her, unlike so many of the conventional videos of today.

The video opens with a very well balanced long shot of Regina standing in the middle of a field. The shot is divided very clearly with they sky in the top half, the horizon line in the centre, the field in the bottom half, and Regina dividing the two in the centre. This clean layout reflects the clarity of the song, the purity of the girl and possibly her naivety in how she pictures the world to be so perfect. This establishing shot is quite a long shot as it lasts for 5 seconds. The following shot heavily contrasts with the previous as it is an extreme close up of Regina’s face; she frames the entire shot where no props or locations can be seen. With a very crisp layout once again her lips are in the dead centre of the shot, the bottom half of the screen is filled with black from her outfit and the top half is her face framed each side by her brown hair. The shot once again being very natural, her clear complexion contrasts beautifully with the black and this makes her red lips even more striking. Once again she is represented as very pure leading to the idea of naivety once again. This shot also lasts around 5 seconds.
The following shots are very surreal. It cuts back to the original layout but instead of being a long shot the camera is slightly closer so it is set as a medium long shot. She is in dead centre once again, standing back to the camera alone. Then a large group of girls appear as they run up the hill breaking the line of the horizon. These girls all seemingly being cloned versions of Regina. This contrasts with the original setting as it was all so natural but the idea of cloning is extremely unnatural, leading to that surreal effect. It cuts to a close up of her leg in the right third of the shot and the girls running up the hill in the distance, but the shot is in shallow focus so only the leg is in proper focus, this distorts the girls faces so the audience still believes these girls are all actual versions of Regina. Using match on action the camera cuts to the ‘original’ Regina’s reaction to these girls, a head and shoulder shot where she breaks into a childish smile. It then cuts to a sideways view of a pair of legs running in a medium close up and cuts back to the shallow focus shot. At this point the camera returns to the shot of her smiling as she is in the centre third of the screen. As the other girls enter the shot in the left and right thirds she breaks into an even bigger smile really revealing her excitement and happiness at her new friends, just like a child.
Through a range of about 10 different angles and shot types including an extreme close up of her lips, close up of her face, medium long shot of her singing in focus while the girls dance playfully in the background out of focus, and other angles of the girls dancing including shots of their legs prancing about. Regina is represented as a character that is experiencing nostalgia, looking back on her childhood days and remembering through these girls the simplicity of being a child once again.
This idea is carried out through the song in different times of the day and different locations including playing under a tree which could connote a family tree or tree of life and youth. Another time/location being mid afternoon as the colour tone is more golden where there are a handful of boxes in the field and all the girls have a red oriental umbrella reflecting the common childhood memory of playing dress up with mum’s clothes or pretending to be a princess with props from the toy box. Another element being a little later in the afternoon when the sun is low and there is a real golden glow reflecting off a piano, this adds a performance element to the original narrative but rather than running parallel it is interweaving so as to maintain a real time element adding to that natural simple feel carried out through the song. During these different scenarios the shots become a lot quicker lasting between 2 and 3 seconds, this maintains a pace to the video to prevent it from dragging on.
Towards the end of the video another character is introduced, the little ‘drummer boy’, he is once again very similar to her with the frizzy brown hair, and they are dressed in the same outfits, but he is used simply to further emphasise the nostalgic idea of childhood by introducing an actual child to the video as opposed to grown up girls with childlike qualities.