Dead and Gone

I decided to analyze a song written by T.I. titled Dead and Gone. The song is pretty deep if you listen to everyone of the lyrics. I beileve that this song has a narrative. The artist seems to show numerous shots, or flashbacks of numerous things that have occured over the years. Hes telling the story of how hes been on the same road of corruption and having bad influence upon the people around him.

The meaning behind the song and the music video is that the old T.I. (the younger and wilder self) is dead and gone. And that hes leaving everything that hes done in the past behind him and now going through redemption. There is obviously even more meaning behind the song and alot of different ways to interpret it, for instance he also talks about how if it wasnt for him or his friends making some rash decisions some of his friends could still be alive.

The video begins with him driving down a road in which hes been going down all his life and that its time for him to change and be better since what hes done is effecting both his family and friends.

There are a variety of shots throughout the video from still images to from what I understand to be depth of staging when they show an almost darker or aged look at some flash backs and various narratives from a boy and a girl walking past a group of men which leads to conflict and then hospitalization. There are many close ups and medium close ups of the two artists T.I. and Justin Timberlake as well as numerous shots of the camera panning around the both of them as they are singing. Toward the end of the video theres a shot where it seems as though the camera is trucking forward toward Justin Timberlake with a scene of piano burning in the background. Througout the video they also have numerous still shots of pictures from cemeteries, to extreme close ups of peoples faces and texts like the emergency room sign. They seem to almost use a stop motion with some of the scenes of flashbacks like the scene of the couple walking between the group of guys. Its obviously not a continous shot but a series of individual photographed frames played in a sequence in which it appears to be a continous sequence but after I analyzed it more it seems to be more so an actual continuous scene in which they edited it to make it appear as though it was pieced together.

There are also some unique angles some of them seem to be repeated where they have a camera above one of the artists and almost pan down from up top. This is a high angle which is then moved down to about a medium close up of JT or T.I. The majority of these shots however seem to be camera movements in which the camera is on a crane.

Heres the Video....

In all the video is very interesting and there are a few different ways in which someone could interpret it. I would have loved to show a different music video like No Doubts "Spiderwebs" or Shiny Toy Guns "You Are the One" (which you should definately check out) but neither of them seemed to show much of a narrative as this video did. In all I think this is a good example with a variety of moving image media which we discussed in class.