Music Video Deconstruction: Where Are Ü Now

Where Are Ü Now - Skrillex and Diplo with Justin Bieber

Performer(s):

Justin Bieber is a 23 year old Canadian singer and songwriter who was discovered in 2008 on YouTube. He has accomplished many things in his career such as going triple platinum, being the first person reach 1 billion views on their Youtube and was the first artist to have seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100.

Jack Ü is a EDM DJ duo of Skrillex and Diplo which formed in 2013. They play at the biggest festivals including Ultra and Reading Festival. They work a lot with other artists to create huge hits and also work on other projects with other DJ's.

Timeline Deconstruction:

0:00 - 0:21 : The video begins with a plain black screens with a white "Ü" in the middle of it. This is the Jack Ü (Skrillex and Diplo) trademark and is used to introduce the song and show who its by, because neither of them are featured in the video it shows that they were still a part of it. It then fades into a shot of a room which is mostly white and has loads of books that contain images of the music video with in it. There is one single plain black book which the camera proceeds to zoom into it.

0:21 - 0:59 : It goes back to a plain black screen and a faded light is shown and the silohuette of Justin Bieber is seen. A spotlight begins to come on slowly and reveals Justin, there smoke surrounding him adding to the effects of the light. The low lighting adds a sense of emotion and gloominess as the question in the song is "Where are you now that I need you?" and it shows that he is in need of someone but they're no longer there. It starts to slowly zoom into him as it gets more into the music. In the background white lyrics are seen showing the name of the song as he says them. An orange light begins to flicker on the screen and it goes to the next shot.

0:59 - 1:03 : The next couple of shots consists of showing paint and paintbrushes which involves slanted angles and defocused backgrounds.

1:03 - 1:10 : It then cuts to a close up shot of Justin's neck with a blue light on the left hand side of the shot.  The camera begins to zoom out and the use of animation comes in. It looks like paint is being painted up his neck to his face splats on the centre of his face. Then a lot of paint looks like it is splattered and light flashed and fuzzes into the next shot.

1:10 - 1:23 : The beat in the song drops and it leads to a mid shot of Justin with a white background and all the paintings and drawings that were done by the people in the art room are put over the top. There are all sorts of drawings and paintings and some have zero significance to the song and they are on the screen for about a quarter of a second. The camera slowly zooms out of Justin and turns into a medium long shot.

1:23 - 1:40 : It goes back to the art studio but now it is full of people who are painting on the pictures and are moving around. They have sped up the video and they pivot around the paintings. It then goes to a low angle shot of the room and slants diagonally of the same setting. Then a pan shot of people sat at the table drawing to a high angle shot which tilts from up to down and shows the amount of people in the room, again sped up. Its then very short, quick shots of people painting and recording the room. It then begins to zooms back into one of the books. This time all the books look like screens as they all have the same video of Justin dancing on them all in time.

1:40 - 2:06 : It has now gone back to Justin dancing in the white studio with the drawings on the top of them again. Its very quick cuts for these shots and the use mid shots, long shots, front facing shots, side shots, panning up and down, and zooms. The light goes from high-key and fades to low-key lighting and then goes to a black screen.

2:06 - 3:01: Then a light begins to fade in and reveals a close up shot of Justin's face and he is singing the lyrics. He is looking down and the light is from above which causes his eyes and other features to look shadowed. It goes to a close up shot of his hand in low-key lighting and the animation is beginning to be used again. The look of paint in blue and pink begins to splat up his arm leading to his hand. As it pans up his arm, the animation is faster and the sleeve tattoo his begins to be outlined and coloured in with the animation. Also graffiti is being animated on his arm. It then shows a close up shot of his ear which has the animation of black paint on it as well as other coloured animations of paint on his neck. A low angle back shot shows his shirt having the animated paint being splat on his back and a stripe of paint going up the back of his neck. It goes back to a front facing close up that starts mid of his body and pans up and the paint goes up to. An extreme close up of his eye is the next shot and the animation of the paint is over is face but is also made to look like its in his eye. Then its a close up of his face which shows that his face is now covered in the animated paint and his face is now tilted upwards showing more features.

3:01 - 3:57 : Multicoloured lights flash and it goes to the next shot when the beat drops once again and goes to a low-key lighting studio with animations of smoke and orange lighting behind him. You can only see the silhouette of Justin and the doodles are again shown over the shots. He is not dancing but is stood centre of the shot and has his hands up and slowly brings them down. It zooms in slowly to him to a mid shot. He begins dancing again and it varies between close ups, mid shots, long shots, forward facing shots and side shots.

3:57 - 4:11 : It then goes to a mid shot of Justin back in the white studio with than animation of paint covering him. It zooms out slowly and then speeds up and it has the effect to make it look like he is melting. It then cuts to a black screen to end the video.

Shot analysis: 

Total Video Time: 4:11

Total Amount of Shots: 93

There were a lot more close up shots than any other shots, but the longest timed shots are normally long shots. The shot transitions consisted of a lot of fades and swiped and a couple of cuts.

Lyrics:

I need you (the) I need you

I need you (the) I need you

I need you, you, you, you, you, you

I need you (the) I need you

I need you (the) I need you

I need you, you, you, you, you, you

You, you, you

I need you the most

I gave you the key when the door wasn't open, just admit it

See, I gave you faith, turned your doubt into hoping, can’t deny it

Now I’m all alone and my joys turned to moping

Tell me, where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now?

Where are you now that I need you?

Couldn't find you anywhere

When you broke down I didn't leave you

I was by your side

So where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

I gave you attention when nobody else was paying

I gave you the shirt off my back, what you saying?

To keep you warm

I showed you the game everybody else was playing, that's for sure

And I was on my knees when nobody else was praying, oh Lord

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

I need you (the) I need you

I need you (the) I need you

I need you, you, you, you, you, you

Where are you now that I need you?

I need you (the) I need you

I need you (the) I need you

I need you, you, you, you, you, you

I need you the most

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

Where are you now that I need you?

I need you the most (I need you the most, I need you the most)

Lyrics Analysis:

This song is thought to be about someone who one person has been there for throughout their bad times, has leant a helping hand and always been there to comfort them, but when the situation turns around the person won't be there for the other one the way they were for them. This song portrays emotion through someone needing someone else and being let down.

Setting(s):

In the music video there are only 2 settings, The first being the room containing the pictures of the music videos which is a plain white room with objects used for painting and drawing. From what is seen it looks as if it's a pop up shop with big windows on the front.

The second setting is the studio which Justin is seen dancing in which can also show that a use of a green screen is used for the background effects.

Costume, Makeup, Props etc:

The only use of props in this music video is in the art room scene where people are seen with paint, pencils and paintbrushes. Other than that there are no props used as Justin does not use any in his scenes. Justin Bieber's costume is very basic and is jeans, white t shirt and a flannel shirt with messy undone hair. They were clearly wanting to push the meaning of the song more than the look of the video.

Camera, Editing, Lighting and Colour:

The lighting used in Justin Biebers scenes are very low-key lighting with one light shone behind him revealing his silhouette another spotlight that slowly fades in but stays dim which contrasts the art room which is very high-key lighting. 

The camera shots are very basic and are just different shots of Justin dancing, there are no pan shots or tracking shots but there is use of zooms.

The editing is more complicated as they would've had to use stop motion in order to use the doodles/drawings from the art room and the use of animation on a software such as AfterEffects is more advanced. 

The backgrounds are normally black and white but the drawings over the top are multicoloured which breaks it up. Also the use of coloured lights and coloured animation are involved.

Record Label:

Diplo and Skrillex are both signed to their own record labels OWSLA and Mad Decent. They are smaller than a lot of record labels but are more for EDM music styles. They have upcoming DJ's and producers signed to them as well.

Justin is signed to numerous record labels, but his biggest and most well known one is DefJam Recordings. They focus mainly on Hip-Hop and Urban music and was founded in 1983. It has a large number of other artists signed to it which include, Kanye West, Logic, Big Sean, 2 Chainz, Pusha T, Desiigner an Jhené Aiko.

Song Popularity: Spotify and YouTube

On Spotify, Where Are Ü Now is the most streamed song by Jack Ü and has a huge difference in streaming numbers compared to their other songs. It has 669,531,824 and their second highest streamed is 71,252,358.

On YouTube, Where Are Ü Now has 976,041,984 which is almost 1 Billion. It has 3 Million likes and only 281K dislikes in comparison.

Focus Group:


1: The concept of the video is clear and creative. I like how the video is made up of different drawings from the public. Also the video is very colourful which suits the dance/EDM genre. The only thing is that the lip syncing is slightly off in some parts of the music video.

2: I've loved this video since it came out, I love how different it is compared to others and how so many people could get involved in it and there were no restrictions. 

3: I like the animations of the paint and stuff on his tattoos but dislike the animation on his face as I think it's just weird and doesn't look good.

4: i'm not a massive fan of Justin Bieber but I actually liked this video as he is not the main part of the video, it's about the drawings and art the public did. It fits into the EDM genre really well but hasn't been done before.