"Stan" - Eminem, Textual Analysis

This music video was a typical Eminem piece involving real life cases, anger and frustration. “Stan” was one of Eminems first songs and we would be able to tell this as all or most camera shots are inside a house with no out of the ordinary production.  The first camera shot is a mid shot of the window whilst the camera is zooming in, accompanying this shot was a diegetic sound of rainfall along with low key lighting representing mystery inside the house. The music video then cuts to a close up of a male dying his hair the same colour of the man his obsessed about, the non diegetic sound of thunder is then introduced along with the background beat growing in pace which signifies a relationship between the music and camera shots.

The camera then cuts to a tracking shot of a woman walking to the toilet, wearing run down derelict clothing having a baby bump which could signify a typical benefits relationship. When this tracking shot occurs the beat picks up which could suggest conflict or confrontation to come. Throughout the music video there are numerous cuts between the real Eminem and the male who is obsessed. There is a real contrast in clothing with Eminem wearing new designer clothes and the other male wearing scruffy dirty clothes which could represent the luxury that famous people have. These shots are produced extremely well as flashbacks for when we get a 360 degree rotation mid shot of the basement with numerous pictures of Eminem on the wall along with point of view shots of the obsessive male writing a letter to his idol.

The editing throughout the music video plays great admiration to the music video as there is a lot of low key lighting which represents depression, mystery along with anger. The cuts also play a great part as it speeds the motion of the video up in someway as more of the story can be told.  In the music video of “Stan” there is always diegetic rapping from either Dido or Eminem. There is no off screen non-diegetic rapping, which indicates the intensity of work being put into the video. This video was inspiration for our own music video as we are also doing a depressing set up of an old love that died. There will also be a lot of diegetic singing which is the same as “Stan”.