Music Video Research 9 - We Found Love

Artist: Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris
Track: We Found Love

Camera/Editing/Visual Style/Mise-en-scene
Before the track begins there is a short preview with dialogue accompanied with reverse shots of two people seemingly in a relationship. The Close Up shots show the relationship has destructed by the way the two are looking at each other and how Rihanna's makeup is smudged as if she has been crying. The setting looks like the music video is set in a rural part of London by the connotation of the blocks of flats. The editing of the music video is rapid, it cuts a lot between different locations and different times of their relationship of being together and apart. I find that the destructive part of the relationship comes from the drug use building up to the chorus. This is shown through close ups of pills being poured from pill bottles and Extreme Close Ups of dilated pupils. This is also reiterated by the way the camera is shot in the eyes of a person who is hallucinating from the drugs and the editing is slow paced to juxtapose with the upbeat track. The camera regularly cuts to Rihanna singing to the track with projections displayed over her to show what is going on in her mind. The structure of the video ends as it begins, the relationship is broken at the beginning and at the end shown by a long shot where Rihanna is crying, crawled up in a ball.

Narrative
The music video is about love and heartbreak. At the beginning the pair seem to be in the 'honey moon period' of their relationship, however, as the music video progresses the relationship is gradually falling apart by domestic violence and drug use turning the relationship toxic to the both of them. By the way the pair steal from a shop, recklessly drive and live in a borderline basic flat, it suggest that the two are hopelessly in love and care about nothing else but being with each other.

Conventional/Unconventional
The music video is both conventional and unconventional. The director of the music video Melina Matsoukas has directed music videos for many R&B artists like Rihanna, therefore it is likely she will use conventions from other music videos she has directed and use them as an influence in this music video. However, this music video falls under the EDM genre and so the video is unconventional as music videos from that genre are typical of a live crowd dancing to the track. This music video however, has a story to it and we only see one shot of the EDM artist, Calvin Harris, in the whole music video.

What Works?
The music video and the lyrics to the track definitely relate to each other. The lyric 'We found love in a hopeless place' correlates with the two people who found love and both knew that they were bad for one another and it would never work out.