Music Video Analysis - 'Big Jet Plane' by Angus and Julia Stone (Colour Analysis)

In the music video ‘big Jet Plane’ by Angus and Julia stone colour represents and symbolises a lot as well as carried much of the narrative. The opening of the video has a light brown colour mixed with the sun bringing a warm comforting feeling, as well as a freeing feeling with the wind blowing through the girls hair, making the audience wonder who and where this girl is.

Then the colour tones change within a cut and we, the audience, are launched into the bland fake world that the girl really lives in, the audience can tell that she is bored from the dull grey colouring of the clips and the fact that she seems to be just imagining that she is free and that she is the person in the opening clips. 

Soon the audience is introduced to the fake bland world she lives in. There are so many different bright colours throughout the toy shop but the filter over the top of the clips dull it down making it look less vibrant and coming across as seemingly fake as the shop is trying to promote a happy welcoming atmosphere but the audience know the truth of the fake happiness and joy. The colours of her uniform, blacks, browns and generally dark dull colours, contrasts with the bright colours in the back ground, the pinks, yellows and greens, showing that although her environment it trying to present happiness, she does not feel that. She looks trapped in the colours and generally uncomfortable, for example she is literally behind bars in one clip from this section making it even more clear to the audience she is trapped in a seemingly exciting but dull world.

We the track the girl out of the main part of the shop, to the back where the bright colours end and the colours are the same at the uniform that she wears, the audience see through the facade that the shop create giving them a very bleak outlook on it and a hope that she is able to get out and be free. Once outside it does not get better for her, the sky is overcast creating a dull grey colour over the clip symbolising that there is no escape and that the dull uneventful world of the shop spreads further. Finally, the audience have real evidence of her want to escape and be free with the picture of the island in her locker, which she looks longingly at. The picture is brighter than everything else in the room and draws the audience’s attention to it to make this point clear.

There is another change in colour and the filter over this section looks rather blue, however unique and better than how it was in the shop as it is more real. The audience see her picking off her brightly coloured nail varnish, possibly symbolising her giving up on her dream of being different, free and traveling. We also see colour in the television screen where Angus and Julia Stone are singing, drawing the audience’s attention to them, additionally they are singing on a beach with a beautiful bright blue sea in the background maybe hinting that she should not give up hope on traveling as well as all the pictures of the places she wants to go.

When it cuts back to the girl walking through the shop again we see that she is less carefree than the last similar scene, her lack of bright colours really show out in this scene as the walks through the row of bright black primary colours, which symbolised how she is not content with how she is with her life. Additionally she her sorting and clearing away the colours further symbolised her want to get away from the place she is in. This is cut in-between back to the light scenes that we saw at the beginning, she again looks carefree and at piece, genuinely enjoying herself. Then we see the first pieces of real nature that is not in pictures, the green grass and the blue skies give everyone hope that she is finally happy with where she is and what she wants to do. The final scene is very ambiguous as she is back being ‘trapped’ in the colour of the shop, cleaning the glass. This saddens the reader as they hoped she would escape and finally be happy, instead her spray on the glass symbolises tears and the audience are left with an ambiguous ending.


Overall, I believe that Big Jet Plane is a truly beautifully crafted music video and while watching it you can see how much through and effort went into it. For example, off the topic of colour, the editing of the video fits with the speed of the song perfectly, they are both slow and smooth making the video much more effective. A lot of the aspects in this video had given me inspiration for my own music video ideas.