Paramore: The Only Exception [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Paramore is an American rock band and released their debut album 'All we know is Falling' in 2005. The style of their music varies from song to song. Some are upbeat rock while others are slow and emotional.
This paramore song is from their album 'Brand new eyes' and it is slow-paced, this fits in with the narrative form of video with the exception of a few performance scenes. This is effective as it tells a story which is backed up by the lyrics. The establishing shot at the beginning shows the mise-en-scene of the living room of a house. The conventions of the mise-en-scene in this shot includes a television, coffee mugs, blankets, bookcases, a lamp and a sofa. The set also suggests that the character's are students and that they live alone. We can tell because the furniture is mismatched, the television is small and old, which suggests lack of money. Also, when the female character writes in the notebook, we can see on the left page that there are class notes. This shows that they are students. when the female character walks into the next set, we can tell that it is representing a single parent who lives in a different house, the single couch chair in the bottom right of the first establishing shot suggests lonliness. I can tell that the scene is meant to show a scene in a different house as the character acts as though she has not seen the older male character (seemingly her father) in a while. The furniture is also fairly matched and organised. This suggests that it is her parents house. When the character exits this scene and enters the bedroom scene, we can see the divide of the two sets. This follows the post-modern theory, in that it relies on the viewers knowledge of how the text is actually made to make it effective.*
The narrative features the artist as a character, this means that the video promotes the artist as well as telling a story, probably a story of an experience of the artist. The narrative also includes some lip-syncing, which isn't included in the narrative apart from on one occasion when the character in the narrative mouths the lyrics that are important for distinguishing what the rest of the lyrics mean. The idea that she 'would never sing of love, if it does not exist', while the rest of the song is about the person she is singing about being 'the only exception'. This refers to the fact that the character's parents are seperated as when she sings that she would never sing of love if it does not exist, she is looking at a photograph of her parents.
When the character runs throught the different sets, she is showing the process of which the character would go if she was going to go along with her decision shown at the beginning. When she realises that the path she has chosen is wrong she goes back through the sets back to the beginning.
The target audience is being represented in this video. The target audience is young people who prefer the rock genre. The song talks about a girl's parents who have split up and that she is relating that back to her own relationship with the male character in the first scene. This situation is a common occurance among young people as they are just starting to have relationships and experience expressions of love at the same time as adult divorce becoming more common.