Alicia Keys: Like Youll Never See Me Again Music Video Analysis
This music video instantly sets a scene by showing a black screen with a time and date in white text Saturday, 1.45AM there is then use of digetic sound of a commotion, people talking with a beeping sound, like a heart monitor over them. Lines like Losing a lot of blood! and Compress! are used suggesting to the viewer that the scene is in a hospital or some kind of emergency room. There is visual imagery at this point showing close up shots of gloved hands working on a bloody male upper torso. The lighting is very low key and the camera is a little bit shaky, and quick reflecting the pace of the scene and event. The shots are extremely short, lasting a maximum of two seconds. These shots include close ups of the nurses stricken faces and then to a defibrillator the beeping noise more louder at this point with no heart beat showing on the screen. There is then a black screen , the beeping still playing and another time Friday 11:58pm
Alicia Keys then enters through a door in a medium shot, we can tell she has been crying because her make-up has been smudged . She walks at a face pace as though desperate to get to her destination. From the white washed walls behind her and the array of people at counters, the audience can guess that she is in a hospital which links her to the male previously seen in the emergency room. There is then another shot of white credits on a black screen showing another time . From this time we can establish that we are going back in time to what happened before the very first scene the viewer saw.
There is then a high angled shot of Alicia Keys on the phone, it appears she is having an argument because of her hand gesture, she puts her hand on her hand in stressed action. As she gets off the phone she stands up, the camera following her through a panning shot . It then cuts to her in a different scene through a medium close up shot, lip syncing to the words of the song. The lighting remains extremely low here, a crabbing shot used to follow the male on the motorbike.
There is then a medium shot of Alicia Keys at work, looking at papers, but she then suddenly looks at her watch suggesting to the viewer that she is waiting for someone . There is then another time shot, 8pm, then a shot with high key lighting of Alicia keys opening a slide phone. At first we cannot see what she is looking at on the phone, the viewer only sees her facial expressions. The camera angle then changes to a point of view shot and we are able to see that she is looking at a an old video recording of her and her boyfriend through a standard medium shot .
A series of wide and medium shots are used to show Alicia Keys at different angles, sitting on a rock. She is alone which suggest she is in deep thought about something. She is also lip syncing to the music which reflects her state of mind. There is then another time shot of 6:45am and then switches to an over the shoulder shot of Alicia Keys in bed with a dark figure to the right of the screen suggesting that this figure has just come home. To reinforce this there is then a medium shot of the singer tapping her wrist as though saying look at the time in an angry manner.
The time is now 5:45am and a close up panning shot is then used to show that he is sleeping on a sofa. This is often used to signify when a couple have had an argument. The camera then zooms out and we see his friend sleeping on a chair beside him as he grabs his shoes and walks out the door. there is then a close up shot of the man riding his motorbike. It is now 1:46AM and it quickly cuts to the very fisrt scene we saw, of the male torso
As the artist walks into the room it looks as though the man is dead, as there looks to be no life in the room, especially with the dark lighting in the room. But as the shot changes to a medium close up we can see that his chest is moving up and down. The beeping sound from the heart machine is also back which suggests a sign on life. The singer then proceeds to take his hand and kiss it. The screen shot gradually fading. The entire video sends out a message of realising what you have before its to late. The couple in this video embody second chances and taking it before its too late.
