30 seconds to mars - The Kill

30 seconds to mars are a very mainstream artist and while they are working in a different genre to us this video has several elements we may borrow.

The video is structured as narrative with some performance elements (though this overlaps later in the video) and is an intertextual reference to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. As such it contains psychological horror overtones conveyed in the mise en scene, editing and use of camera.
The video opens with an establishing low-angle shot of a bleak, intimidating country resort and one of the band members comments that it will be completely empty for several days. This immediately foreshadows a horror-inspired narrative. Jump cuts between several corridors in the hotel provide an intense sense of isolation with an unknown figure seen moving in several shots out of the frame, as if trying to hide from the viewer - conveying a fear of the unknown to the viewer yet at the same time creating curiosity.

The narrative is structured around the band members going through what the antagonist of The Shining (Jack) does - becoming insane after the ghosts in the hotel convince him he is one of them. This is related to the song's lyrics regarding personality conflicts, and this narrative is most importantly highlighted by the mise en scene - the band members are initially dressed casually in black and jeans and this is juxtaposed by the "ghostly" band members wearing tuxedos along with the other actors, putting them at opposition while the target audience of the band are most likely to identify with the casually dressed actors.

The editing and use of camera in the video is effective in confusing the viewer and creating the horror-movie atmosphere. An extremely fast pace of editing in which flashes of corpses or old-fashioned characters occur is used synchronously with the pace of the guitar and drumming, and is juxtaposed by the slower sections in the video where the viewer is given far more time to make sense of what is on the screen. This is something we intend to use in our video often, contrasting the upbeat sections of the song with the darker, faster sections by using synchronous editing and suggestive mise en scene corresponding with the song. The use of camera is varied similarly - shots with the "normal" band members are similar to shots of a protagonist in a film, closer together or point of view to create sympathy between the viewer and character while on the other hand shots of the mysterious antagonistic characters are long shots which are generally shorter and often intimidate the viewer - for example extreme closeups of the antagonistic frontman in which he breaks the fourth wall not only draws your attention to them, but it appears that he is opposing or talking to the viewer instead of the protagonist. This is discomforting for the viewer as it blurs the line between the narrative of the video and reality.

All these elements combine to create an archetypal and effective horror-movie style narrative, as a music video - with synchronous editing aiding the atmosphere in particular.