ROYALS ANALYSIS

Royals is a really nicely engineered pop song by mainstream newcomer Lorde. The song was released in 2013.

The video opens with a shot of a road, seemingly filmed from a car. The car is driving away from the road. It's an overcast day in suburbia.

 The nect shot is a title screen for the music video which is something I'd like to include in my project: it's a sudden change of pace and really gets the audience's attention. I love how visually simple it is too.

 

Lorde herself is not the main feature of the video. She is shown lip syncing to her song in closeups and tight midshots.

The rest of the video follows the life of a young boxer and his friends. The way it's shot is stunning. The mood of the video captures the mandanity of his life in this suburbia. The colours in his home and of his clothing are dull shades of grey and brown. The sort of soft grunge tone of his surroundings give a feeling of longing and wanting to escape.

The use of water in the video is really lovely too. Theres a great shot of the boy completely submerged in a pool where he's right in the centre of the frame.

 It almost reminds of the film 'The Graduate' which like the video has themes of being lost and bored.

The video seems to follow the boys life over the course of multiple days, possibly weeks. There are shots of him with his friends both during the day and at night. I love how raw this video is, it seems so personal and real.

 The video ends with the same shot as it started with, a car driving through suburbia. This time however, the car is driving INTO the street, not away from it.