Travis Scott – Sicko Mode Music Video Analysis

 Travis Scott – Sicko Mode (2018)

The video starts with many drone shots showing a suburban town with the colours of the streets and buildings in bright yellow and green with darker blue and red colours, whilst leaving the people and their bikes as their normal hues which represents the innocent, childish, bright nature of the kids biking with the chaos of the neighbourhood juxtaposed around them. The next shot is a figure walking in the distance with a huge moon appearing just before a solar eclipse and heat waves obscuring the audience’s view of the figure as the first backing vocals come into the song. As the first verse starts he appears at a medium close-up shot revealing the figure is Drake. Soon after there is a long shot of Drake releasing red smoke whilst in a red outfit himself, blurring the contrast between Drake and the background and this same smoke is then seen covering the same town at the start of the video. The snare rolls then match the same cuts as the extreme close-ups of the people in the village as it slowly zooms in more with each person. After this it cuts to a shot where Drakes face has been tracked in post processing as he’s jumping around to the song and a glitch stretching effect is used to sweep between scenes to Travis riding on the chorus as his verse starts. This creates a very mysterious intro visually which matches the openness and ambiguity of the song itself.

Many effects are used during Travis’ verse such as him shrinking and growing whilst the environment around him is in a time-lapse, the world tilting on the side, his chain turning into a noose and moving mouths used on the train carriage graffiti. Another effect used multiple times across the video is an effect where rectangles of colours are swapped around in pattern whilst moving which creates psychedelic visuals which matches the genre of the song. Another glitch effect is used where a mushy trail of darkness comes off of Travis as he’s walking which again signifies the song moving onto a new section this time being Drake’s verse.

The theme of the red smoke is briefly continued to establish familiarity for the viewer as Drake has returned to the song, although the song quickly changes to a black and white colour scheme which matches the themes of the lyrics being darker as he explores topics such as taking hard drugs and driving through streets surreptitiously with the car lights off. More psychedelic visuals are used such as Drake falling through a space itself and his face flaking apart revealing his skull underneath and an effect where he spins around his hand doing a symbol in an almost stop motion fashion. As Travis joins back into the song vocally, he also has more screen time in the music video ending in them two standing together back at the solar eclipse location from the beginning of the video.