"Please Don't Stop the Rain" - James Morrison, Textual Analysis

“Please Don’t Stop the Rain”, from the album Songs for You, Truths for Me was James Morrison’s eight single; it was co-written with Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic.  The song was released on March 30^th 2009.  “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” made its debut at number 68 in the charts and two weeks later it had risen to number 39 – it peaked on April 19^th 2009 at number 33 in the UK charts.  The song lasts for 3 minutes and 59 seconds and is of the pop/rock genre.  In this concept, “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” possesses a similarity to “The Scientist” by Coldplay (the song which we will be creating our music video to), as this too is classified as pop/rock or indie.  I have chosen to complete my textual analysis on the first 2 minutes of the James Morrison song; the reason behind me picking “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” is because it has many similar codes and conventions to the ones that we will be portraying throughout our “The Scientist” video, and we have gained a lot of inspiration from this source.  These codes and conventions include close ups of the artist and their instrument; aspects of ambiguity or abstractness; and the use of pathetic fallacy, particularly rain.

The video begins with a black slug which fades to present a long shot of a man on his own, isolated in the middle of nowhere.  This represents some sort of vulnerability as isolation generally connotes being the weakest and most susceptible to pain and death (sharks always attack isolated seals, as opposed to ones in packs).  The music video that we will create will share ideas very similarly to this – a black slug will open our video and the camera will then cut to a long shot of George, our main character who is the scientist, who will be the only character in our opening shot; he too, will be isolated and vulnerable.   In “Please Don’t Stop the Rain”, the camera then cuts to a mid shot of the main character; the mise-en-scene portrays greater isolation as there are cliffs and mountains behind him, and no other characters are visible behind James Morrison.  The lighting is ambient as the character is outdoors.  Over the next thirty seconds, the camera cuts to a series of shots, predominantly mid shots and close ups – this shows strong resemblance to how the first section of our “The Scientist” video will pan out.  It also fulfils one of the codes and conventions of typical pop/rock genre music videos which is to have a number of close ups of the artist.  In our video, we will have George sitting at his piano in complete isolation, and the camera will perform a number of cuts to show close ups, mid shots and long shots of him playing the introduction to the song.  Although we will use cuts, there will be a slow pace of editing to match the pace of “The Scientist” song; this is the same as in “Please Don’t Stop the Rain”. 

Throughout the first two minutes of the clip, there is also some sort of disorientation of time and space in “Please Don’t Stop the Rain”, the same as there will also be in our version of the “The Scientist” music video – this is evident in James Morrison’s video by changes in surroundings, displayed by the mise-en-scene in the background of mid shots of James.  This will be evident in our music video by the flashbacks being displayed in black and white, whilst real time will be in full colour.  There will also be illusion scenes where Jess, George’s girlfriend, will appear in a costume of all white (signifying purity, angels) but, of course, she is dead, and as soon as he goes to touch/kiss her, she will disappear.  The mise-en-scene throughout “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” displays cloudy and rainy skies which are darkening, dull and dismal – these are displayed behind the character during mid and long shots.  The connotations of dark, cloudy skies and rain is depression and sadness – this will be a large code and convention within our version of “The Scientist” as George is depressed that he did not spend enough time with his girlfriend and now she is dead.  Depression is a key theme in our video.  Again, similarly to in “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” we will have a scene that is shot in the rain, where Jess is at the train station waiting for George but he never comes.  This is an element of pathetic fallacy because the weather reflects the mood of the scene.

The editing in “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” is very slow and not frenetic as there is little movement.  There is great use of tracking and panning where the camera follows James as he walks along on his own.  This slow sense of editing fits in with the codes and conventions of pop/rock music as there is usually very little kinetic camera work.  This is, again, similar to the video that we will be producing for “The Scientist” – we have many shots which are long-lasting and the cuts between shots are generally flowing, with few jump-cuts, except those when the camera is cutting between real time and flashbacks.  In “Please Don’t Stop the Rain”, although there is element of disorientation somewhat, the video is all shot in real time – this is a significant difference to our rendition of “The Scientist” because we have lots of different time frames being used.

The mise-en-scene in “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” – particularly James’ costume – contributes to him fitting into the ‘archetypal character for a pop/rock video’ category.  He is a young, white male and these are stereotypically used in most indie and soft rock videos; conversely, characters portrayed in R ‘n’ B and Rap video are more likely to be black to fit the archetype of a rapper.  In this respect, “The Scientist” will be similar to “Please Don’t Stop the Rain” as, Hamish Williams, who will be playing George (our main character) is also a young white male.  Additionally, Emma Hart who will be playing Jess (George’s dead girlfriend) also fits into the stereotype of a white, lonely, pretty, innocent young girl who the audience will become attached to.  Just before the 2 minute-mark in the video, there are several shots (including an extreme close up of the eye, and various other long, mid and close ups) of a husky running around in the same foggy conditions that James is in.  The mise-en-scene suggest some element of being lost or trapped in these surroundings as visibility is very poor, and lighting is somewhat low-key.  The connotations of this fog and darkness could be that the character is unsure of their identity, or perhaps stuck in a relationship.

The sound in this music video is all non-diegetic because the music is added after the video is made, not during the process of shooting the video.  James Morrison is lip-syncing well to make it look like he is singing as he is walking along in the middle of nowhere in his video.  This is the exact effect that we will be aiming for in our "The Scientist" video.  Hamish, our main actor who is playing George, will be lip-syncing for the whole song when his face is in shot.  This will be rather hard to do, but as Hamish is a musician and he knows the words to the song, we feel that this will be achievable.  Another aspect which might be hard to complete will be to synchronise the image and the words of the song perfectly in time.