The video starts off with showing a close-up of each band member individually standing on what appears to be a helicopter pad whilst the instrumental part of the song is playing, with their logo on a flag behind them. 24 seconds into the video, it changes from performance based to the storyline, which is about three very unhappy and fed up teenagers. The first teenager is a girl sitting at a dining table with her parents on either side of her. All are sitting in silence. As the song gets more of a beat (the drums start playing) both parents start to argue, which is made clear as not being an unusual event. The next teenager is a male sitting in the back seat of a car getting shouted at by his father. He is shown as fed up by him resting his head on the window and looking away from his father when he is shouting, almost to say to just shut up. The clip of the second teenager is short and swiftly moves onto the third teenager which is another male. He is shown to be working in a kitchen, clearly overloaded with work as he seems to be the only one working there. However, the abuse he is receiving is not from his parents but his boss, who I can only guess is shouting at him for being too slow. One thing that all three teenagers have in common is their emo look. They are all wearing black, with dark make-up and face piercings. This look fits in well with the ‘unhappy/fed up’ theme of the song and also fits in well with the genre of the song as black is a very common convention in rock videos.After the three clips are shown, the video goes back to the performance side whilst the chorus is being sung. When another instrumental part of the song is being played each individual scenario is played again for a few seconds at a time, each showing a build up; that they are about to do something to stop the shouting. After another performance section is done on the video, the lines ‘scream your heart out’ are sung three times. Each time the line is sung one of the scenarios is shown and the teenager starts to scream. This part of the song is the climax. The song is about how people just sit back and let abuse happen, however, the climax is saying that we should stand up and let ourselves be heard. This is what the teenagers do. In the first clip, the girl screams, and the parents stop shouting as her mother is shown covering her ears and every glass on the table is shattered. In the second clip, the male in the kitchen is shown screaming and the plates break and food flies everywhere, and in the third clip, the male in the back of the car starts to scream and the windows of the car break. The video finishes with a performance clip.A lot of zooms are used in this video, to emphasise the emotion that is on every characters face, whether it be anger, frustration or unhappiness. Close-ups are used at the beginning of the video to show each individual band member, and is also used at the point of the scream to show the emotion that is trying to be portrayed. An establishing shot is used for each scenario to obviously set the scene at the beginning of each little story. Panning shots are used when the gaze of one character is followed to the other one, e.g. in the first scenario, the girl looks at the mother and instead of the camera cutting to the mother it pans from the girl to her. When changing from story to performance in the video only simple cuts are used, however when each cut is done it is done in time with the beat of the song. Finally, at the end of the video when the song is finished the video fades out from the band on the rooftop, so that for a few seconds the image is distorted and then finally changes all too black.The mise-en-scene is different depending on the part of the video. When the performance part is playing, there is simply the instruments consisting of guitar, drums and keyboard, and they are all in black and white. If it wasn’t for the background lights in the back, it could easily pass as the video being shot in black and white. As mentioned, the rest of the characters are also all wearing black. The lighting throughout the video is constantly dull, to set the tone of misery. Obviously, each scenario has its own props as well. The dinner table is set to look high class, so candles are used, the table is large, wine is present etc. The car is the only prop that is used for the second scenario. And finally, in the kitchen, obviously all the normal kitchen utensils are used; pans, plates, carving knives etc.The album that features this song is the third album produced for this band. From the first album to this one, it is evident that the style of the band has not changed, as each album front cover is mostly black and white. Throughout all three albums, each time the font of the band name has changed. In this album the name is all in capitals and takes up quite a bit of the cover. The picture in the middle is of a bird, looking quite demonised, which fits in well with the genre of rock. The title of the album, ‘Liberation Transmission’ is quite small along the bottom of the cover in what could be Old English writing. There is also a banner image between the bird and the album title that reads ‘NOBIS PRO LEMMA VOBIS’. When translated from Latin into English, it roughly comes out as, ‘for us, for them, for you’. The only colour present on the cover is red that looks as if it has been just flung on, possibly to look like blood
The poster for this album very much relates to the video ‘Rooftops’. This is evident from the skyline background which suggests that this has been shot on a rooftop. It also has the same picture in the corner, of the bird, which is on their album. The colours used are black and white which is evident on both the album cover and in the video.
Once again, I think the target audience for this band is teenagers, 16+, and for the song ‘Rooftops’ I think possibly the audience may be slightly younger as the relationship between teenagers and adults/parents that is shown in the video is common in almost all ages. I also think that, for this song, the male to female ratio on who would be more appealed to the video would be quite equal. I say this as the video includes both male and female characters and also, again, the relationships shown on the video is present for both males and females in real life.
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