Music Video Deconstruction 6, What I've Done, Linkin Park

The music video “What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park is a performance based music video.




The video shows a series of different clips demonstrating all the bad events and disasters happening around the world. There are lots of fast cuts so people will have to watch it a number of times to fully view all the quick cuts. The world clips are separated by the shots of the band performing, they are located in the middle of a savannah/desert background. This makes the audience ask questions as to why they are there.

The shots used vary from old clips of the past and historical events such as World War Two and various riots, to give the audience the idea that disasters have been happening for a long time. Most of the shots of the band are low angled, looking up are the members of the band with the sun covering the tops of their heads to signify importance. There is quite a bit of spiralling around a single band member – the vocalist, this signifies that he is the singer and there for in some respects is one of the most important members of the band.

The bands colour scheme is black along with their musical equipment so that they can stand out from the reddy/brown background. Quite a lot of the old clips are in black and white because of the lack of technology at the time, the quality and colour suggests that they have been taken from old film footage; this then ties in with the band’s colour scheme. This similarity in colour schemes makes the video follow a certain pattern and brings the video together.

The Mise-en-Scene for the band performance sections seems to create a never ending day because they have set up big floodlights and the towering speakers around them. The camera circles around the different members and when this happens you see either the sun or a floodlight behind their heads. This could also tie in with the use of mixing old film footage with recent day disasters suggesting that they have been happening for a long time, which will give the target audience a real glimpse of all the problems and historical events that have and still are today shocking the world.

To conclude the music video is a good performance based video. The editing and transitions follow with the tempo of the music and lyrics. The fast cut montage makes the audience catch only a small section of certain clips meaning that if they are not quick enough they will miss certain parts making them need to watch the video a number of times over to see the parts they might have missed.