Calvin Harris - We Found Love

We found love is a song written by Calvin Harris but song and filmed with Rihanna. The music vide is directed by Melina Matsoukas, who describes the singers as a "drug-abusing thrill-seeker in a relationship that quickly spirals downward into addiction and violence". The music video won the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.The song reached number one in the charts for a total of three weeks.

The main character is played by Rihanna, and there was a lot of scepticism on whether the video was relating to a past relationship she had. I personally really like this music video because it is a prime example of how good narrative music videos can be when performed correctly. It provided a lot of inspiration for our video. 

Lyrics 

It's like you're screaming, and no one can hear 

You almost feel ashamed 

That someone could be that important 

That without them, you feel like nothing 

No one will ever understand how much it hurts 

You feel hopeless; like nothing can save you 

And when it's over, and it's gone 

You almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back 

So that you could have the good 

Yellow diamonds in the light 

Now we’re standing side by side 

As your shadow crosses mine 

What it takes to come alive It’s the way 

I’m feeling I just can’t deny 

But I’ve gotta let it go 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

Shine a light through an open door 

Love a life I will divide 

Turn away 'cause I need you more 

Feel the heartbeat in my mind It’s the way 

I’m feeling I just can’t deny 

But I’ve gotta let it go 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

Yellow diamonds in the light 

Now we’re standing side by side 

As your shadow crosses mine 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place 

We found love in a hopeless place

The video starts off with an extremely long intro to the video, nothing to do with the song, as it is narratively commentated over by a lady. What this does it is set the scene for the video and help explain to the audience what is going on between the characters. The director uses quick cuts and fast paced editing, of the same two characters, in lots of different places to imply how quickly time has flown bye together. 

The atmosphere seems very depressing and dark with the shots showing the two characters in broken down scenes. From shots of the two of them sitting in a bathtub in a grotty smashed up apartment to a shot of them smoking curb-side to a road at night-time looking slightly under the influence of a substance. These visuals are connoting a sort of "Live Fast Die Young" attitude with the drugs and the carefree attitude. There is one particularly disturbing close up of Rihanna with her hair all wet and looking general dirty that just summarises the intro.

Then as the music kicks in the "temperature" and mood of the song changes dramatically. The overall appearance of the characters improves and they look a lot more taken care of or "refined". The facial expressions have also changed from the serious stares during the intro to fun, clearly enjoyable, happiness. A massive contrast change in atmosphere. 

In the build up to the chorus the viewers are met with a montage of drug related shots and sexual scenes, giving a real sex drugs and rock & roll theme. Creating a sort of euphoric look to drugs with the multi-coloured cigarettes and pills and relating it to sex by cutting scenes of the two characters in between. Then as the beat drops for the main riff cutting to a music gig outside. 

As the video progresses it carries on into madness. The upbeat happy atmosphere that we were seeing at the start of the video eventually breaks down into fighting, with the final scene being her leaving him passed out on the floor. The whole video represents how relationships can turn out. Although they may seem amazing at first its so easy how they things can turn around to be the complete opposite. In this case love. 

Although the video seems very simple when watching it there are many small things that i picked up on throughout that influence the mood and story to the video. Colour has been massively edited with during the video. There are several different scenes that have been colour graded to have a completely different tone to it. Looking below you can see the differences and this tone can reflect on the way the audience can perceive the shot. For example the shot far left makes her look very innocent and shy due to the calming blue tone to the shot. However if you were to replace that with red then it makes her look fierce, the complete opposite. 

Camera wise the video is shot not steady but not hand held, its sort of in between. There is movement in the shots have this is not smooth which works cleverly because it helps the audience connect with the video and fill more emerged visually. The camera angles are relatively horizontal as well with 9/10 being eye to eye contact level. There are a few high angle shots but this is during the mud gig scene where high shots help to show the amount of people involved in the gig and not connote dominance to a specific character etc. 

Overall I think the video works really well. The story is based around love and how rollercoaster the relationship can be, and I think that visually it fits perfectly. Honestly I can find almost nothing to fault or that I could improve upon.