Music Video - Dire Straits_ Romeo and Juliet & Tunnel of Love

This music video for the song 'Romeo and Juliet' was made in 1980 for the Dire Straits album 'Making Movies'. I also looked at another track from this album called 'Tunnel of Love' and i found that the styles of the two music videos are very similar, but at the same time different enough for each of them to still be interesting and link to the individual songs.

The first thing I noticed in this music video was the simplicity of the scenes. the video was taken in a studio with simple white structures that act as the surounding environment that is described within the lyrics. The simplicity of the studio set allows the audience to just focus on the characters and their story as it is based on the same concept of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Although the audience know this story all too well, they still get obsorbed by this video because of the actors and how they are presented.

Throughout the song there are moments where we see the content of the video matching the lyrics of the song, for exaple:

Lyric: "The dice was loaded from the start"

Action: we see two dice being rolled out of someones hands. One dice with pictures of Romeo and the other, Juliet. 

Lyric: "You exploded in to my heart"

Action: A small explosion next to the dice 

This technique takes changes the metorphorical meaing from the lyrics to literal actions helping the audience visualise the physical effects of the carefully thought about lyrics.

Both of these music videos have avoided syncing the voive with the artist's/ character's lips. This technique wouldnt have worked for 'Romeo and Juliet' as it is narrating the two characters shown in the film. However it would have worked in 'The Tunnel of Love' video as it is a montage of vieos of the band performing the song, again in a very simple, set.

'Tunnel of Love' also used the technique of matching the lyrics with the actions shown in the video, again helping the audience to visually relate to the lyrics.

 The shots of the characters are very simple, overall with that and simple scenes and set, 'Dire Straits' would have made a huge profit from both music videos.