Music Video Research: Never gonna give you up by Rick Astley

Artist: Rick Astley
Track: Never gonna give you up
Visual Style/Mise-en-scene
The use of panning shots and close-ups is a generic feature found in the most popular music video as the singer performs, it mostly focuses on showing his emotions to the audience. There is also many establishing shots of the scenes, even if they are only for a second or two, this is used to familiarize the audience to the video as he constantly addresses the camera.
Tracking forward- A few scenes of the music video are tracking forward shots to him as he dances or sings in place and brings us back to close-ups to show emotional expression through facial expressions. This is used commonly in movies and music videos.

Narrative/Technique used
The story of the music video is quite simple and is explained through the lyrics. It is Rick Astley admitting his love to someone and trying to remember the good times.
However, it can be taken in two different lights, one that he is admitting his love to you as an audience member (Which is still used today to make some of the audience feel like it is targetted at them.) Or, that the girl in the first few scenes is the girl he is telling this all to as we ears drop on it.

It could also be seen as a message towards people on how you should be in a relationship, filled with hope and never let them cry or say goodbye by actually committing to the relationship.

Conventional/Unconventional
This is, as expected, a music video about loving somebody and never giving up on them, which is  represented in the lyrics of the song as well as the video. It also has the lip syncing performance for the camera on stage as well to show a deeper meaning as he performs it for his loved one but is still a very common in most pop music videos.

What Works?
One of the best points about the music video is the slightly more unusual shots, pans, and tracking that was used because it wasn't overwhelming and created a more energetic and positive feeling to the track. Even though it wasn't a sad song.

However, the rest of the video fits into the pop genre massively as it contains loads of scenes filled with emotional close-ups and lip synching, but this is occasionally changed as it focuses on the more enjoyable side of it than the difficult side of the relationship as he always smiles, even if it is serious or not for that scene.