RM - The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You Deconstruction

Band: The Rembrandts

Song: I'll Be There For You
Genre: Pop
Audience: All
Year Released: 1995

The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You” is a performance based music video with elements of a concept video of the friends cast taking over the band. With the first few shots featuring close ups of the Rembrandts band members and the main cast members of the American sitcom Friends (Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer), thus being an intertextual reference as “I’ll Be There For You” is the sitcoms theme tune. The intertextual reference is kept throughout the entire video.

Lisa Kudrow using a clapper board.

The music video’s shots and linked into the pace of the song, with the shots quickening whilst the pace of the song quickens. An example of this is 0.09 to 0.11seconds where shots are cut to match with the song’s pitch. As well as this the lyrics are linked to the video due to the intertextual reference. The reason for this is that “I'll Be There For You” is about friendship and the video contains the friends cast. This is also used to effect with the music video. An example of this is where Lisa Kudrow uses a clapper board where there is a clapping in the song.

Last shot during the video.

Throughout the music video most of the shots are panning or tracking which signifies that they are being filmed using television cameras which is anchored by the shots in the gallery as well as the studio the video is set in. The audience are also viewing what is happening from the prospective of the people in the gallery which is anchored by the last shot where the editor and producer are shaking hands. As well as this the shots used focus on the Friends cast more than the band, especially the singer. This isn’t a common convention for a music video. This is also anchor by the shots types use, for the Friends cast the shots are mainly close-ups or mid-shots where as the band are mainly mid-shots.

As well as this the focus of the video changes through it, the focus changed from the band to the friends cast. There are also added effects of black and white footage. This is mainly used for the friends cast until they have taken over the set, thus anchoring the change in focus.

There are also similarities between this music video and Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" as both music videos contain footage of the bands playing but also the crew producing the music video. Also both black and white and colour footage is used during the music video.