Music video

Name of music video: Sleep now in the fire
Band: Rage Against The Machine
Director: Michael Moor
Date released: 2000

As far as how conventional the video is to the genre of the music, it would be fair to say that it is fairly conventional, by this I mean it falls into the category of metal which is a sub genre of rock music, and the conventional video for rock music would be the band playing there instruments, and in this music video the band is seen to be playing their instrument, throughout the video.

The mise en scene in the video is also very conventional looking at location costume and expression and location. By expression the band while playing seem to be rather aggressive this connotes that the band does not care much about how they are perceived by other people by people who do not like there music, and all they care about is rocking out and going crazy and putting there crowd into a form of riot as it were. Location wise it is rather unconventional as it would be normal for a music video for this sort to have the band playing in front of a live crowd in arena of stadium but instead in this video the band are playing in front of the American stock exchange, this I feel is very unconventional for rock music and seems also to be very random, however this location fits in with the lyrics of the song.

Michael Moore uses visual and locations to fit in with the lyrics of the song. The song is about money and about how people in power abuse it which in turn means poor people who really need the money don’t get it as the richer people just become richer. You can tell this is what the song is about because every now and again graphics come up on the screen showing facts or figures that they believe everyone to be ignorant to, one of the facts that comes across the screen is the richest 10% of America own 80% of the wealth. One of the lyrics in the song is ‘The world is my expense’ and when this is sung there is a picture of Zak de la Rocha, the lead singer, in front of a background where there is loads of money also the writing is in green and the colour of green connotes greed. Also the video is filmed in front of a live audience of workers having their lunch brake, these workers you would assume would not be allowed to listen and enjoy the music that the band is playing as they are singing about how greedy people like these that work in the stock exchange are, and the lyric that is sung is ‘I am deep inside your children, They'll betray you in my name’ and this is edited to pictures of people form the stock exchange really enjoying the music and almost going crazy to the son out to the song, this is fitting as they should probably not be enjoying the music so much and this could be seen as them betraying the stock exchange in favour of rage against the machine.
Also there is a link between the music and the visuals. The music is a of a rather aggressive nature and this is displayed throughout the music video by the fast paced editing and the camera shots of the band playing their instruments in a somewhat aggressive manner, also the visuals of people jumping around and enjoying the music also fits in with the fast paced music as the anger of the music is displayed by these fans releasing their energy in what seems to be some sort of protest.

The music video is half performance based and half narrative based. Most of the way through the video the band is seen to be playing their music to a crowd. As far as it being narrative based it is only narrative based when they show a mock version of who wants to be a millionaire, the story line is linear as there is a clear division between the beginning and the end of the story.