Lana Del Rey - Analysis

Artist: Lana Del Rey

Album: Born to Die

Digi-pack - The album artwork for Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’ album makes her name a statement in bold, white writing. It states to the audience that this is who she is and what you see is what you get, with the simplistic font. Similarly the album’s title relates the lyrics and tone of music we should be expecting. The positioning on the name behind her underlines who we are listening to while the title of the album in front of Lana informs the audience of what she is presenting us. In this case her album ‘Born to Die’. This idea subtly states the facts of the album without overwhelming the audience with fancy fonts and decorations. The predominant colours, blue and white, aren’t too bold and balance each other out. Within the mise en scene, her makeup adds a small splash of colour, revealing the glamorous persona the artist presents to the world. The red on her lips suggests that within her genre, Lana is a bit different, and bold in her musical choices. This contrasts the white on her shirt, representing her classical image - unlike many pop stars, she opts for a more classy style. Likewise, her hair is perfectly styled, reflecting the 50’s style she aims to portray. Her still positioning and facial expression reflects her music – moody and slow.  The background seems to be relatable to an everyday lifestyle, with what seems to be a fence and a car against the blue, again linking into the colour scheme. The two tone colour scheme is something we could also try on our own work as it will give the artwork a professional feel without overwhelming the audience with too much colour. 

Video - Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ music video begins with a series of what seems to be home video footage. It gives the impression that the video was filmed in the past and is being viewed as a memory of what was, much like the lyrics in the song describe. The footage, being shot on a handheld camera, relays images associated with childhood, for example a cartoon, and children playing in a pool. The video, for me, seems to try and create a feeling of nostalgia within the audience in order to relate the song to a memory in anyone. Editing is fairly quick for such a slow song, with most scenes being around 3 seconds long. This makes the video seem more authentically like memories - snapshots of images.  The variety of clips could seem random to an unsuspecting viewer, however the overall effect makes a beautiful video. Like mentioned previously, I think this helps to make the video mean something different and personal for everyone. This is something that appeals to us in our video, for example ‘Medicine’ could mean a variety of metaphors for anyone. A recurring character in the video is a blond woman; however her face is always partially covered, again giving the impression that it could be any member of the audience’s memories. Interspersed with scenes of Lana singing, performance is limited to around 3 seconds on each take, much like the narrative. Towards the end of the video, we see shorter takes of flashing lights and police cars, perhaps signifying some sort of danger or a memory that is hazy or they want to forget. Use of lighting is particularly important here, as it makes the footage reflect a memory in a realistic way – blurred and not fully focused. I think lighting could be transferable in our video as we can use it to reflect our characters weakness, or lack of grasp on reality. An aspect of the video which is unusual, is a small snippet of sound on top of the song. This backs up the theme of memories, with the character remembering those few lines with a image. The line itself 'Are you alright?' is relatable to any situations, perhaps not just reflecting the situation literally but the character questioning if they are alright on a deeper level. Although this is an interesting extra to the video, I'm not sure how it we could use a similar technique in our video.

Advert - The advert for her album again reflects her glamorous style, using costuming within mise en scene a key part. The gold jewellery adds a touch of star quality to the advert using expensively branded earrings as we can’t see any of her clothes. This is seen also through her hair, which, like her album styling is perfectly intact. We can see through this that her music will also have this seemingly effortless style to it. Her logo is placed in the left hand corner, along with her album title, in a fairly small size, not taking anything away from Lana’s face. Placed at the top of the page still makes it visible to the audience though and shows the importance of her stage name and album. The plain, light background is contrasted with the red rose in the corner. This again represents the artist’s glamorous, luxe style. A technique we like is the fact that the advert has a picture of her album in the corner with a review number to give an indication the audience should buy it. Props are limited apart from the cigarette which exudes her influences from eras when smoking was seen as ‘exciting’ and ‘cool. This also gives the impression that the artist doesn’t care what others think of her and is a bit rebellious. This is often seen in her musical choices, as she does not fit into the mainstream category of pop.