Both the lyrics and the video to Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance' give off themes of 'living whilst you're young' and enjoying a care-free attitude to life whilst experiencing a party. The song suggests that the singer (Gaga) is not only asking the imaginary character within the song to dance, but also the audience that is listening to her, which entices her fans to also enjoy a life of freedom and fun. When listening to the song you expect the video to be rather similar to what it actually is. The scenes in the video represent the lyrics and the song very well-a party of young people enjoying themselves.
The shot transitions for this video are very fast, this is to represent that life is going very fast for people involved in the video-symbolically this could due to alcohol consumption or even substance usage however this isn't recognisable to the upon first viewing. In some places they correspond with the beats in the music, whereas elsewhere in the song this is not the case. In post-production the video has been edited so Lady Gaga (the artist singing the song) is shown singing the lyrics every three or four shots. When she is not seen singing the lyrics, her or other party members are seen acting out the narrative (a crazy party.)
The mise-en-scene for this video is very interesting. There is a lot going on in many areas of every scene-the attention to detail is impressive. It would appear the video itself is set at a small house, the house has clearly been decorated for a party look and filled with large amounts of people dancing. The people seen dancing in the video are wearing odd objects/costumes, for example at one point a person is seen wearing a mouse costume head and another a Native American headdress, the people in the video are wearing these bizarre costumes to suggest that odd things occur when under the influence of alcohol and it's also giving the message that they don't care how they look because they're having a fun time.
All camera shots in this video are rather close up, there are very few long shots in the video. This is done for a certain reason-it gives a sense of 'only caring about having fun in that moment' and not worrying about the outside world (the only situation they're thinking about at this point is what is happening in the present time.) However at some points in the video there is a long shot, this occurs when it shows a shot of a room filled with people, this represents the outside eye-someone looking in on the action and making judgements about what they're doing. When these shots occur, the actors within it continue what they're doing, which suggest that they simply do not care what people think about them at this point.
In regards to sound, at the beginning of the music video a girl in a black wig walks into the frame, holding a large boombox, and then places the boombox onto a shelf and then presses play on it which then prompts the music to begin playing-this suggests that the sound that we're hearing is diegetic sound because the people in the video are aware of it playing. This would make perfect sense as the scenario in the video is a party (where it is natural for their to be music playing for guests to dance to.)
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