Music Video Analysis- Rabbit Heart (Florence and The Machines)

Rabbit Heart is a single from Florence’s debut album, Lungs and reached 12th in the UK singles chart after being released on 22nd June 2009. After spending fifty weeks in the top 40 it eventually gained its number one position and has since spent thirty two weeks inside the top ten. The genre of this song is classed as indie pop, and may be along the lines of something that we would like to do.

The video is mainly narrative based with Florence singing in a field with a number of performers. A spiritual ritual appears to take place in the video, where Florence and the actors dance, food is thrown from a table to the floor and finally Florence is pushed out into a river in a floating coffin-like box in a way similar to a Biblical story. These spiritual themes relate directly back to the lyrics for instance the line ‘we raise it up, this offering, we raise it up’ as well as the song’s chorus also by the clothes that she wears, it's fairly obvious that this music video is supposed to re-create the biblical time period.
The video starts off with an extreme close up of Florence’s mouth with the rest of her face covered by a piece of cloth. The camera then pans outwards as the cloth is lifted into a medium close up. This draws the audience’s attention to the opening lyrics of the song. Tracking close ups and medium close up’s are regularly used throughout the music video of Florence making her constantly the centre of the audience’s attention. This is a generic convention of music videos because the perofrmance uses the camera to engage the audience to show that she is a star performer. Only one musical instrument from the song appears in the video. A man in a suit playing a harp appears intermittently creating a fairytale like scene fitting in with the lyrics and meaning of the song. One or two other instruments are used simply as props in the video to help the video relate to the meaning of the song. The cutting rhythm of the song is slower than most music videos, but still relatively fast. This combined with the filter used on the camera and the occasional use of the fade transition gives the music video a dated appearance, as if to suggest that the ritual happening on screen used to happen, but no longer takes place. A number of extras appeared in the video, most notably at the end where Florence is carried towards the riverbank and pushed out onto the water. The extras make the "ceremony" look like a joyous occasion as singing and dancing takes place in the background.

Rabbit Heart was one of Florence's first single, so this was an important song for her to create her public image and show to the audience who she is. The video helps to show Florence challenges the general stereotypes of female artists like her that she is not the typical female vocalist sex symbol, but as an artist and performer is passionate about writing interesting with unique videos to accompany them.