Music Video Analysis: Narrative

Eminem ft Rihanna: Love The Way You Lie 

Directed By: Joseph Kahn 

"Love the Way You Lie" is a song by American rapper Eminem from his seventh studio album, Recovery (2010). The music video for the single was released on 5^th August 2010. The audience which this video is aimed at is teenagers and young adults, due to that being his majority target audience being of this category. Also, as the video includes: Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan, who are well known actors of the block buster’s such as: Transformers, whose target audience is yet again teenage/young adult based.  As Eminem is seen as a main stream artist, the music video attracted many viewers; on youtube the views for it currently stand at: 485, 873, 755.

This genre of this song is rap/hip-hop. The music video is one of a narrative form; it tells the story of domestic violence, which showcases a love-hate scenario of an unstable relationship between Megan Fox’s and Dominic Monaghan’s characters. However, the video does contain both performances from Eminem and Rihanna, when they perform the lyrics to the camera outside the burning house and the cornfield. Therefore this video can be seen as a hybrid. The video is mainly set at the home of the couple but includes other locations such as: a bar, cornfield. The video was shot on location but also studio based.

The reception it received was majorly successful. The music video became an online phenomenon, earning 6.6 million views in its first 24 hours on VEVO, and 18 million views after five days, breaking a YouTube record for having the most video views in 24 hours However, the video sparked controversy for explicitly and using domestic violence as a principal theme.

The video opens with a close-up on Rihanna, who sings in front of a burning house, as an interspersing scene shows fire on the palms of a woman (Fox). A couple (Fox and Monaghan) lie asleep, but the woman suddenly wakes up, while Eminem begins to rap in an empty cornfield. After the woman sees the name "Cindy" and a phone number written on her boyfriend's hand, she attacks him. He tries to kiss her, but is spat on the face. She then attempts to leave him, but starts to fight again after she is brought back. The man slams his girlfriend onto the wall and aims his fist at her, hitting through the drywall instead. After Rihanna sings again, the video flashes back to when the man and the woman first meet "at a seedy dive bar next door" to a liquor store, in which the man steals a bottle of vodka after they fall in love and kisses his girlfriend on the rooftop.

The video shifts back to the present, as the man apologizes to his girlfriend and later drinks a glass of liquor. Rihanna sings, while the couple are reconciled. In another flashback, the man attacks someone who played pool with his girlfriend. After the video returns once again to the present, Eminem joins Rihanna in front of the burning house and raps the final verse. The man follows his girlfriend, who walks away but locks the door to stop him from coming. In a different scene, she handles fire in her hands again and closes them to extinguish the flame. The couple, along with Eminem, are then engulfed by flames. A scene shows them in front of the burning house. In the end the couple remain together and the video returns to the first frame, in which they lie in bed asleep.

The video uses a mixture of camera shots & angles. Close up and medium shots are mainly used for when there are performance shots of either Rihanna or Eminem this is to show the lip syncing and the emotion of they are trying to get across whilst performing, especially in Rihanna’s performance pieces she is visibly seen as upset. However, for Eminem there are many long shots also used for this performance to show his complete body language. For the narrative scenes a variety of shots are used, these include: close ups, long shots, panning, tilts and tracking.

The editing for this uses jump cuts between narrative and performance scenes to show a clear change. Otherwise the editing is seamless as the edits are hardly noticeable especially during the narrative to show the flow of the story. As well shot reverse shot is used between Megan Fox’s and Dominic Monaghan characters.

Special effects are also used in this video, the effects are mainly to do with the fire, this can be seen when the characters and performers appear to be engulfed by flames.