Kooks – 'Sway' Music Video

The Kooks - Sway on MUZU.

The video opens with a short introduction including some background diegetic sound before the music track starts around 15 seconds in.

Mise en scene

The majority of the video is in black and white creating an old and authentic feel. The video is filmed in a house with band members’ playing cards and doing other various things. Towards the end of the video, the main focus is on the lead singers face as his mouth is synchronised to the music track.
Most of the happenings in the song are related to the lyrics. Different things are used to represent what’s going on in the lead singers love life.
At the beginning of the video, there is shot of the seaside. This is used to show the passing of time of the singer’s life. The card tower that is shown a number of times being very precarious, suggests that the relationship the singer has is falling apart. At the end of the video the whole house begins to fall down, again in relation to the singer’s life falling apart.

Camera

The camera tends to be quite close to the focal point, making us feel slightly cramped, but often pans around to show the surroundings of the room and what else is going on. The close camera shows us more detail so we can clearly see what we’re meant to and only what we’re meant to due to the lack of longer shots.

Editing

Throughout the whole clip, fast paced editing is used, cutting between many different shots of various things. The length of each shot varies depending on how fast the music is going. When there is a build up in the song, shots get shorter, the camera moves more rapidly and cuts become more frequent showing us more of the surroundings.