I am a Video Editor – and one of the things (probably the main thing) that inspired me to work in television post production was actually music videos.

Music videos are one of my favourite things in the world and I spent hours and I MEAN literally hours when I was growing up watching them Even now in the modern world, I can find myself getting lost on YouTube watching music videos for hours on end – they are an addiction.

This month we are looking at the band that I think was the first emo band I listened to when the genre and style came about in the mid noughties. I wasn’t sure of My Chemical Romance at first but when I heard Helena I absolutely loved them. Their videos are dark but they are very beautifully edited and put together to create this world and I think that is why there is so much love for this band. As they have grown older the creativity in their videos have developed and become amazing, I mean look at the way they announce their return to the world below and you will see why I wanted to include them in this feature.

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My Chemical Romance – Helena

Why did you choose this particular video?

This was the moment I fell in love with My Chemical Romance – I loved this song and video so much that it is the one that I always think of when I think of this band. It was such a dark video and that is why it stood out, it didn’t care and that is what is so unique about MCR they take a topic and put a spin on it. The music video is yet again beautifully edited.

So, what is the narrative?

The band are at a funeral and the corpse comes to live throughout dancing and creating ‘memories’ for the members of the funeral party.

Favourite parts of the video?

The one thing I love about My Chemical Romance is that the colour plays such an important part in their videos and this particular video again plays with it in such a unique way. I love the way that the colours red, black and white are used very cleverly in the first part of the video as it creates lots of emotions to the audience and again a sense of drama. Another thing that I really love in this video is the variety of camera angles it creates such an intense feeling to the video and again captures so much narrative in a short amount of time.

Another thing that I love about this video is the fast editing between the funeral service and the dancing, it is such an unusual thing to have at this event that it really heightens the emotion. I love the way that the narrative is depicted with these speedy shots. I really think the dancing was a great addition to the video.

Another thing that is fascinating about this video is that when the corpse awakes the music also changes in style. This is a great narrative choice in the video but yet again it creates this arc of emotion in the video and it all goes in time with the music and creates this really ghostly and creepy feel to the visuals. The way that the style of editing changes as well as a slightly brighter colour scheme means that again it takes you on this phenomenal journey.

The final part of the music video feels incredibly dark compared to the rest of it as the colour style dramatically changes. The way that the colour grade focusses on the blues makes the scene feel very cold and also very dark that it emphasises the emotion and the drama even more leading to this strong finale.