Radioactive - Imagine Dragons (2012)
Radioactive was first released by Imagine Dragons in 2012. Since then it has received critical acclaim and become what is known as a sleeper hit, reaching the title of third best selling song in the US. The song also reached the top in Sweden as well as being in the top 20 in mandy other countries.
The song itself features cryptic lyrics that follow the theme of revolution and an apocolyptic world. The video was released two months after the release of the song. When talking about their insparation for the video, Imagine Dragons said that they wanted to stray away from the expected apocolyptic theme of the song, and instead create a fantasy plot.
The viewers attention is soley focused on the visual side of this shot as we see a lack of sountrack, leaving us with diegetic sound of birds and the wind rustling the trees. The first shot works very well as our establishing shot, as it introduces us to a charecter, which we later discover to be the main female protagonist, however it does reveal any real details about the charecter at this point,
The lighting is quite naturual, possibly edging towards lower key lighting to foreshadow a slightly sinister tone. The camera is at a slightly low angle while the camera itself is very close to the ground. The gives the impression that the protagonist has a very long path to make, while making her appear small.
As the sogn progresses the soundtrack increasingly fades in, replacing the non-diegetic sound. This is one of the first performance shots in the video, however the diegetic sound of the wind rustling can still be heard in the background.
The lighting is very low key, which a single light above the performer, which draws the viewers attention to him. The performer himself is framed in such a way that makes him seem trapped and very vulnerable.
The performance shots seems to come in groups of two or three before cutting to a shot following the narrative. These performance shots generally seem to use fast paced editing to show the different elements of the group, in this case the drummer, seen by his drumsticks
A strong convention of music videos, and one featured in Radioactive is the syncronisation of cutting and audio. All of the previous shots seen in Radioactive have been relativley slow paced in terms of movement in shot. As soon as we can hear the 'drop' of the song, the pace changes and we see a lot more aggressive movement on screen.
As well as this the lighting has changed to much more high key, to match the switch to a more upbeat tempo of song. The lighting also works well to display the control of power in the narrative as we see many high key shots of the men around a fighting ring betting, however the low key lighting is used for the woman and performers, thus establishing the two sides of the conflict.
Many of the performance shots tend to be close up shots, which brings emphisis to the instruments themselves, such as in the shot pictured left. As well as the distance of shots there is also a distinct use of camera movement, whereby, even most of the short shots encompass a small amount of camera movement either backwards, fowards or purposeful camera shake. This keeps with the tempo of the song and means that the piece does not become boring.
In the shots with the betting men, we can hear a diegetic soundtrack of a crow, with people shouting, however it is very subtle as to not distract the viewer from the song itself. This soundtrack is also stopped when the piece cuts to the performance shots.
This shot is a very interesting one as we see a merge on non-diegetic and diegetic sound. Where as in previous shots we can hear sound not present in the song itself, such as the crowd screaming, this recognises the sound of the performer gasping for breath after the line "I'm breathing in the chemicals". After this happens the shot takes an interesting turn as it actually modifies the audio heard in the normal song. After the gasp is heard, the non-diegetic soundtrack completely cuts out to give way for diegetic sound such as a drip of water and the sound of the crowd shouting. This is interesting as it shows the flexibility that a music video can have. Once again we see the use of a high angle shot to show the weakness of the performers, while the betting crowd have more low angle shots. An interesting point is that the female protagonist has mainly eye level shots to show the unsurity of her power level.
This is one of the final shots after the performers have been freed by the female protagonist. We see a shift in camera angles as the piece moves away from the high angled shots of performers and to a more eye level, if not slight low angle shot. The lighting is probably the most striking element of this sho, with a general low key lighting fillinf most of the shot. There is however a light filling the center of aim, thus silhouetting the performers and female protagonist as they walk towards it.
Walking towards the light is also very symbollic as it shows that they are walking into a better situation and leaving the darkness behind. As this shot ends, we also see a fade away of the non-diegetic soundtrack, thus mirroring the start of the song. This gives the narrative of the video dominance over just listening to a stand alone song.