Lana Del Rey - Music Video Breakdown and Analysis (Born to die)

Lana Del Rey - Music Video Breakdown and Analysis

Lana Del Rey has many music videos with a very high production value. However, this hasn’t always been the case. Before signing with Interscope records and Polydor, Lana’s music videos where very simplistic and featured her very little. This can be seen in Lana’s first music video “Kill Kill”. The music video for Kill Kill consisted of a compilation of vintage home videos which would occasionally cut to Lana singing 5 or 6 words. In the music videos, when Lana was in the shot, she would not be in the centre. This denotes that she didn’t have much star quality and that other things where more important. The videos had a very low resolution and low production value. However, all of this changed drastically when Lana signed with Interscope and Polydor.

Born to die. This music video truly brings out the potential of Lana Del Rey and is a great example of how she managed to adapt to dominate the music industry. Born to die clearly has an incredibly high production value; one of the many perks of being singed to Interscope. Everything within this video is an improvement on Kill Kill. The music video was of such a high standard it won MTV Video Music Award for Best Art Direction and MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography. The first major difference that we can see in born to die is how Lana is in the centre of the shots and a lot of them are close –ups of Lana’s face. All of the shots in the music video revolve around Lana. This is great as it massively develops Lana’s star image and shows that she is important. Doing this helps grow a fan base around Lana as they now show her as an important and glamorous figure. The next big difference is that there is now a strong narrative to the music video. The music video is about how she dreams of remaining in a relationship that is destining to fail, hence the title “Born to die”. To convey this narrative the video has a lot of cross cuts featuring Lana and her lover together. Furthermore there is a lot of symbolism used to convey the danger of the relationship such as Lana being dead, lying in the arms of her lover.

Another thing that becomes clear is that the music video is a lot more sexual than that of Kill Kill. Sadly, this is mostly due to the entire music industry becoming more sexualised. However, this video used it to convey a deeper meaning, having it fit the overall narrative of narrative of love and passion within the song.

The next impressive change is the location of the music videos. In Kill Kill Lana was in a small room decorated with flowers. However, within Born to Die Lana is sitting in the centre of a beautiful cathedral. This was only possible due to the big budget that Interscope assign to Lana. The budget for the music video is estimated to be around 15 times more than that of her previous music video made with stranger records; Video games. Again, this bigger budget meant that the music video could have much better mise-en-scene. The two tigers by Lana’s side are good evidence of this.

The camera angles and shot types are also more artistic, challenging and high quality. For example the steady, slow zoom to Lana faces. This shot is very slow and steady, while also fitting the pace of the music. This is great because it emphasis how, even the camera work has changed to make Lana Del Rey more relevant. All of this also makes the video look more professional and goes with Lana’s persona of being very collected and effortless.

There are lots of cross cuts within the music video too. This is good because it keeps the music video “flowing”, making sure that there is enough narrative for the audience to understand the song put also enough screen time of Lana so that the audience can remember her. The cross cuts also synergy, not only with the beat of the music, but also to the meaning of the song. All of this proved successful. This is evident through how the music video won various awards and how born to die became the 5^th best-selling album in America in the year of its release. Furthermore, the born to die music video has received over 200,000,000 views on YouTube. This shows how Lana has managed to adapt, becoming more relevant and more appealing to a wider audience.