The Milk - Every time we fight

The Milk – Every time we fight

 

The narrative of the video tells the story of the Ford factory in Dagenham that is facing closure. The main setting is the social club that shows that the factory is a huge part of that community. A line in the lyrics that goes ‘every time we fight we get a little stronger’ reflects the mood of defiance and team spirit in the video and despite losing their battle to keep the factory open the community spirit appears to remain strong. In the promo there is no performance from the band themselves but there is another band shown in the video playing in the social club. The band themselves appear as factory workers and friends of the main character who tries his best to save the factory. In terms of narrative this is an unconventional music video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The video starts with a couple of long shots that set the scene of the factory and also give a bleak atmosphere to the start of the video and this could be foreshadowing events later on in the promo. From then on the video is mainly mid shots and close ups and these are used to show the emotions of everyone involved in the closure of the factory. There are a couple of pans and long shots of the inside of the social club and this is done to show the amount of people that the factory closure affects. There is a short tracking shot of the main character at the start of the video as he walks into the factory and this could show familiarity and that he completes the same journey every day. The pace of the editing predominantly matches the pace of the song with cuts every couple of seconds and it slows down at the end as the song slows in pace. There are no effects placed on the video and this is probably to keep the feel of setting as natural as possible and not taken out of proportion. At the start of the video as the factory workers are walking through the gate there is a quick cuts between each character walking through the turnstiles and this is done to introduce the main character who appears last in this sequence and also to show that the video starts at the start of the working day. The wide angle shot of the people singing outside the social club also shows the togetherness of the people in the video and again reflects the idea of teamwork in the song lyrics.   Long shot inside social club.

 

There are a lot of things in the mise en scene that point to the factory closure such as the news on the television in the background that reads ‘possible factory closure’ and this is done to give the audience a clue to the storyline for the rest of the video. There are also newspaper headlines that are similar to this. This shows that the factory workers know that the factory is going to close. There are also a lot of the pictures of the Dagenham factory in the past and it is a place a lot of people will know about. The costumes of most of the people are work clothes and overalls but are also quite dark and this reflects the mood around them as the factory closes.  

 

 

 

TV showing factory closure headline.