Music Video Analysis

The music video I chose to analyze is called, "Hold On, We're Going On" by Drake. I chose this video because it doesn't follow the typical norm of your standard music video. For one thing, the video is about 8 minutes in length, however the actual song falls a bit short of 4 minutes. This hints that the video either goes beyond the boundaries of the actual song or it elaborates more on the concept.
This video is a combination of a conceptual and narrative type of music video. Taking influence from 80's mafia movies, the music video is shot like an actual film. To summarize the concept, Drake and his friends / business partners are celebrating their achievements , but are interrupted by a mysterious caller who claims to have kidnapped Drake's love interest. From this point, they go on a mission to get her and take out her kidnappers.
The tone of the video is dramatic, so the lighting is dependable on each scene and isn't consistent. There's a few scenes where Drake and his associates are at a club or at his mansion so there's plenty of lighting throughout those scenes however, there's a scene where they ambush the kidnappers in a late night shootout, so aside from the gunfire, there isn't as much lighting. This is necessary though to distinguish the two very different tones of the music video, being the bright light Miami vice setting and the gritty mafia one. There's primarily cooler colors throughout as well such as blues, greys and blacks.
The first key moment happens early in the video, where Drake gets the call about his girlfriend being kidnapped. This is a pivotal scene because it sets the tone for the entire video. The whole scene is shot at a bar table and you can literally see the mood change. It goes from a celebration to a tragedy and the director did a good job of capturing that. Since the setting is so small, you can see the emotion in everyone's face when they found out what's going on, as the camera pans from actor to actor. Another key moment is when Drake finally gets his girl back, which changes the tone right back to how it was at the beginning of the video. Throughout the video, the girl looks frightened and hopeless but once she sees Drake there's such a sense of relief, and you can see this same emotion in Drake's face once he realizes she's safe.
The camera moves from time to time, especially in the climax shootout scene towards the end of the video. It pans back from Drake and his associates to the kidnappers to capture the essence of a war zone. The rest of the video is shot primarily still so the camera movement in this particular scene is used to emphasize the action sequence.
I would say the video reinterprets the story of the song in a new way. To summarize the song, it's pretty simple. Drake sings about a girl, letting her know his intentions for her and assuring her that they're going "home" which could symbolize a happy or comfortable place or literally home. In the context of the video, this girl has been kidnapped, and he's letting her know not to worry because he's going to rescue her and take her back home. The spin that he made on the video really makes it that much more entertaining.