RM - Green Day: Boulevard of Broken Dreams Deconstruction

Band: Green Day
Song: Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Genre: Punk Rock
Director: Samuel Bayer
Audience: 15-25
Year Released: 2005


Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is a narrative based music video featuring the band walking around with the lead vocalist, Billie Joe Armstrong, singing throughout and at certain parts the band playing the song in a room, the room which they are playing in features bullet holes in the wall behind them, this also features in their single “21 Guns”. The music video follows on from their previous single “Holiday”. This is anchored by the ending to the song being played at the beginning of the music video. Both these videos were filmed with the use of projecting footage onto a screen instead of green screens.


Most of the shots used in the music video are close-ups of the lead vocalist as well as being the main focus in the music video. Thus being a common convention in music videos, and medium shots of the other two members of the band, Mike Dirnt (Bass) and Tre Cool (Drums), and long shots used for when the focus is on the entire band. As well as this the lead vocalist is lip-syncing thus being another common convention in music videos.

During the performance element which features the band playing in a room, pictured left. The tempo of the song quickens during this sequence the length of each shot decreases allowing for more shots to be used. This goes against the majority of the song because slow paced allowing for longer shots of the band for whoever the audience is focusing on.

“As shown in an MTV Making the Video special, director Samuel Bayer used unorthodox techniques to achieve the aged look of the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" video, including using rear projection (as opposed to green screen) and physical damaging the negative: scratching the film with razor blades, pouring coffee on it, and smudging cigarettes on it.” Sourced from Wikipedia.

 An example of this is pictured below.

Here is the making of video Part 1:

Here is the making of video Part 2:

Here is the make of video Part 3:

Here is the music video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams: