Vernallis Analysis - Eminem - Lose Yourself

Narrative:
The video is half performance based and half narrative. The video includes many scenes from the movie '8 Mile'.
The video starts off by showing off Eminem's home town of Detroit, Michigan and shows off many shots of the city. It then cuts between Eminem performing and 'B Rabbit' (the character in the movie) readying himself for a rap battle. It shows B Rabbit performing to himself in the mirror until the lyrics come in. Eminem starts to rap about how nervous and sick B Rabbit is feeling before his battle but how on the surface he looks 'calm and ready'. However when it's B Rabbits turn to rap he breaks down and doesn't rap anything, he just lets the music play while he anxiously watches the crowd boo and insult him.

During the second verse of the song it still cuts between Eminem performing and parts of B Rabbit from the movie. The parts of B Rabbit start off with him being violent at the start of the second verse due to the frustration suffered from his previous rap battle. It looks as though B Rabbit is giving up as he's going home but in fact he is trying to practice further. He then enters a new rap battle to which he seems more ready for, it then cuts between him practising even more with jump cut fades to show the amount of time lapsed while he's practising. We then see him coming home since a long time to his daughter who barely recognizes her own father due to his time spent battling.

During the second chorus we now see B Rabbit performing to the crowd who are reacting wildly to his lyrics. It seems as if he now has the crowd on his side and has faced his fears of being a white rapper and has won over the crowd. During the third verse we see B Rabbit again battling against an opponent and looks much more confident. It then cuts back to the scene where he's meeting his daughter who eventually runs away from him as she doesn't recognize him. When the third chorus kicks in we see B Rabbit performing in a rap battle while the crowd are holding him up. There are also many cuts of B Rabbit and his love interest when they're together and when they're not. Towards the end of the song Eminem says 'you can do anything you set your mind to man' and then walks away. This could be suggesting that if like B Rabbit you don't succeed at first you can still succeed eventually if you keep your mind to it. The video then finishes with night shots of the city.

There is a visual response to the music as the scenes represent the lyrics. Eminem's lyrics says 'there's vomit on his sweater already, moms spaghetti' while the scene is of B Rabbit throwing up in the toilets.

In this video there is more performance than narrative as we can see Eminem rapping towards the camera in this shot. The narrative is slightly confusing as we don't see the whole story, we only see partial bits from the movie which have been selected. There also doesn't seem to be a clear beginning, middle or end. The music is very upbeat and the lyrics are rapped with passion to give the video more drive and effect. During the end there are just shots of the city to which it zooms out and fades out to finish.
The video doesn't really answer any of our questions whether he makes up with his daughter or what happens with his love interest.

Editing:

The editing is fast and sometimes it is difficult to see what is going on. The edit is cut to the beat in some places to give the video that extra buzz. The video also shows something happening in B Rabbit's life, and then later on in the video it shows something that happened prior to that which breaks continuity. There are many jump cuts while Eminem is performing as we can see in the two images below.

Camera Movement and Framing:

We see in this shot below that this is an extreme close up of B Rabbit's daughter. 

We see Eminem perform during the video at fairly similar shots. He is always in the centre of the frame and is always rapping towards the camera.

 During the start and end we see many establishing shots of the city during day and night as we can see below.

Diagesis:

We are unsure of what is going on at the start, and the video only makes slight sense to those who have knowledge of the actual movie. As the song is the soundtrack to the movie, the music video will not want to reveal much about the movie. Therefore this music video doesn't give us much of a clear cut story as the video is meant to entice us into watching the movie. A lot of the scenes from the rap battles are repeated. Also, the beat is the same throughout but from the start and end, the video is also very dull throughout, which maybe represents the life that B Rabbit lives in.