RS - Deconstruction - Depeche Mode -Everything Counts

Artist: Depeche Mode

Song Title: Everything Counts

Year: 1985

Director: Clive Richardson

Audience: 15-24

Genre: Electronic/Synthpop

Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts" is a concept based music video and contains various footage of around a city and footage from within a car going down a street. The music video also contains footage of the band lipsyncing to the camera and also dancing which is a typical code and convention of the pop/dance genre. There isn't really a story to the music video which is why it is not under the narrative category. However it does have aspects of a performance music video with lip sync and dancing.

The other three members of Depeche Mode

Dave Gahan the frontman of Depeche Mode is only seen in the music video alone supporting the usual convention of the frontman being apart from the group and seen alone. The rest of the band are seen as a seperate group all together never in the same shot as Dave until the very end on the beach when the band is all in the same shot for the first time. The shots of the rest of the band are very long and are just one continuous shot however they use multiple layers whilst these shots are on to make them more interesting than just one.

Overall the shots within the music video are very long, however the video does rely heavily on the use of multiple layers to attract the audience. With the shots being so long it would be boring but by using tonnes of multiple layers it makes it that more interesting. The music video has a performance side of the music video containing the band playing their instruments within the music video for verisimilitude and also lip syncing to the camera for another performance side.

As you can see on the left Dave is only seen by himself apart from the rest of the band to signify he is the frontman. The bits before the main song starts there are fairly fast shots of the city and the people within the city and also after the main song when the video is finishing the editing speeds up again. The majority of the song contains long shots however with various use of multiple layers to make up for the long shots.

The audience is attracted to the music video by using the excessive use of the multiple layers throughout the song despite having the long shots. The dancing in the music video is typical of the genre, you would not see dancing in a metal video. The end shots are very bright, on the beach which again is typical of the genre of the music video.