Music Video Case Study: Rihanna - Stay

Song: Stay

Artist: Rihanna feat. Mikky Ekko

184,311,766 YouTube views

Uploaded on: 12th Feb 2013

Directed by: Sophie Fuller

The video for Stay by Rihanna follows the song's lyrical content of temptation and failure of resisting a new love. It is a performance based music video as it does not feature a storyline. Themes explored in the video include love, temptation and the emotions that being in love comes with.

This video in particular takes Rihanna into a new direction as it expresses her vulnerability and also because her videos are usually shot in extravagant locations with evident huge budgets. The video opens with Rihanna undressing and climbing into a bath tub. Throughout the rest of the video she is presented nude in the bath tub full of green cloudy water and strategic camera angles to protect her modesty. The featuring artist Mikky Ekko also appears in the video to perform his verse. The video alternates between Rihanna and Ekko until the end of the video.

Rihanna, in this video, is represented as a broken, emotional, vulnerable woman that is bearing her soul (both physically and emotionally). Mikky lip syncs his verse continuously throughout the video, however Rihanna unconventionally lip syncs only certain parts of the song (1:10).

The video is quite minimal in terms of camera angles, mise-en-scene special effects and editing techniques. The video features many close ups to highlight the emotion within her face as she sings the song. Also so that Rihanna connects with the audience more as she is singing. Other shots such as mid-shots effectively protect the singers modesty while remaining the intimate and emotional aspect of the video. The video also utilizes many extreme close of ups of Rihanna's body parts such as her bellybutton and her neck increasing the vulnerability of the character. The camera angles of feature artist Mikky Ekko when he first appears in the video long-shots with dark lighting effectively making him seem mysterious as we are introduced to the character. The dark lighting in Ekko's verses compared to the vibrant lighting used for Rihanna's scenes create a Ying-Yang effect between the characters. The mise en scene of the video is, like most of the video, minimal. Rihanna remains in the same room/tub for the duration of the video. The setting is similar during Mikky Ekko’s verse in the song as he sits on the edge of a different bathtub in front a mirror and a grand chair. This is again to keep both the song and the video as minimal as possible. The video doesn’t feature many fast edits (cuts for example) as the song is a ballad and cut shots increase the pace.

The primary target audience of the video is Rihanna/Mikky Ekko music fans who of course will support their work. The secondary target audience of the video is casual Pop and R&B music fans that listen to music channels and watch YouTube/Vevo. This target audience in particular may be interested to see the video as it is quite the opposite of her usual standards. Additionally people outside of Rihanna's initial target audience may also be interested in the video because the song is more mature than a long of songs Rihanna has released previously. The music video encourages them to buy the record because the more they see the video the more they will eventually like the song if it hasn’t already caught them.

My group particularly liked the close-up and extreme close-up shots that were used to capture Rihanna's emotion and vulnerability. This is something that we would like to subvert in out music video because it fits in with one of the themes this video has.