• Vance Joy is an Australian singer-songwriter signed to Atlantic Records (a subsidiary of major label, Warner). His music can be categorised as fitting into indie folk-pop genre.
• Riptide was Vance Joy’s first single to be released in the USA (2013) following his debut EP “God loves you when you’re dancing”. It became a platinum selling single.
• The video was directed by Dimitri Basil and Laura Gorun and has more than 350 million views.

Bathes Semiotics Theory

The pile of dollar bills which accompanies the line “oh, all my friends are turning green”, connotations of the colour green in relation to both money and envy. This example of polysemy could be interpreted in a variety of ways e.g. is it implying that friends (possibly in other bands) have ‘sold out’ by giving into money? Or might these friends be turning green with envy at the success of Vance Joy.

Connotations-

Increasingly darker lighting throughout the scenes of the woman getting the lyrics wrong.

“dark side”, reference to ghosts and demons.

Denotations-

“and they come unstuck”, with the shot of lolipop stuck together

This cowboys running from himself

Genre-

Anchorage-

Anchorage is when a piece of media uses another piece of media to reduce the amount of connotations in the first, therefore allowing the audience to interpret much more easily.

Editing-

Quick camera movements

Jump cuts-

Montage editing is used in an overt way- a wide range of contrasting shots

Juxtaposed (often through hard jump cuts) to convey a large amount of information:

• The editing together of seemingly disparate images invites audience interpretation and candidates could consider Einstein’s concept of “intellectual montage” where new ideas emerge from the collision of images and generate new meanings that might not otherwise exist.
• Many of these cuts also have a link to the lyrics themselves and you should explore the visual metaphors and possible significance of these edits in relation to the lyrics.