Bon Jovi - It's My Life Analysis

In our practice group, myself, Michael and Sean, we did a brief analysis of the music video for Bon Jovi's "It's My Life", which was made in 2000.

The video starts with a man, who is about 20, watching a Bon Jovi concert on the Internet. He then receives a phone call from his girlfriend telling him that Bon Jovi are in the same city that they are in and he then sees his girlfriend on the computer screen. She asks him to get there in 5 minutes, so he gets there by using "Parkour" techniques, so doing things like jumping over obstacles so he can get to the concert in less than 5 minutes.

This video attracts people because of its fast pace and most teenagers enjoy watching freerunning/parkour so this may have been to expand Bon Jovi's audience into the teenage segment.

Genre: Rock
Audience: My group decided that the audience would be aged 16-30 male, however I personally think that people that age have other musical interests (outside America especially, I have never met a Bon Jovi fan and I am not one myself!), therefore I think the audience would be over 40's American men.
However, in the music video, the male protagonist is about 20 and looks like he doesn't have a lot of money and lives with his mother, which relates to the point the other two in my Media group made about tapping into the younger generation.

The music video isn't typical of its genre as rock videos don't have freerunning in them. The typical convention is having a rock concert in the music video which is explored in this video as well.

Lyrics: Bon Jovi may be suggesting that people should be in control of their own life, and the music video connects to this by having the main character freerunning, suggesting freedom.

Image of the Artist:
The music video is trying to portray people breaking off from society and to live their own life.
M-E-S, Colours, Characters, Locations and Props: The protagonist lives in what looks like a flat with his mother, and this convention is usual in media texts, that is, the protagonist is not particularly wealthy.
The image of the artist is quite casual so people can relate to it. When the man falls through the sunroof of the van, he is surrounded by strong, angry men which relates to the theme of people getting into trouble and a general sense of pressure. Also, the fact that this particular scene has a dramatic edge to it when he jumps off the bridge onto the sunroof, which is in slow motion, makes the music video seem more film-like, which could be to help Bon Jovi's new image as this was probably their first song for a while!

Camera Angles and Editing:
Synchronised Editing: The cutting rate matches the beat of the song to emphasise the pace.
How does the music video start? It starts with a wide angle shot of the man typing on the computer.
Unusual Editing Techniques: Slow Motion and Freeze Frame of the man jumping off the bridge.
Camera Angles frequently used: High angles are used when the man is at home and Low angles are used when the man is freerunning and performing parkour moves. This it to suggest that he is a normal person at home or even unimportant and when he is freerunning he is more important and extraordinary.

Representation: Various representation (e.g. women): the man is the person who has to run across the city and his girlfriend is already at the concert.