Music Video Breakdown: 'ON' by BTS

The music video for BTS’s “ON” opens with a drone shot of a six by five formation of figures clad in all-black and combat boots, each holding two black sticks. There is not a single BTS member in the frame. The figures’ movements are simple, all angles and lines. Standing in the middle of some open-air concrete compound that looks like a military base, they are a force to be reckoned with.

And then Jimin comes in and breaks all the rules. Not only is he wearing all white, but he is also flexible, lifting and curving all parts of his body at once.

It turns out all of BTS’s members are mischief makers. One by one, they are revealed, clad in white and pulling moves outside of just marching and raising their arms. Eventually, we forget about their army friends.

The camera facilitates this forgetting through its balancing of background and foreground. Almost every time a new BTS formation comes on screen, it is first introduced with a wide shot situating the group in the wider army, then the camera cuts closer into a tighter, shallower shot of BTS, so that the army becomes blurred or blocked. Additionally, the cinematography is careful about how much viewers see of each group. While all of the army’s transitions and formation changes are made transparent, it looks like BTS members are constantly vanishing into and appearing out of thin air, lending them an air of mystery and intrigue that demands our attention. Ultimately, the army acts as a backdrop for BTS. Each of the BTS formations assimilates the others through this milieu of discipline and legibility, localized in the bodies of a unified military-like force. The bodies of the army become a conduit for inter-BTS exchange.

This exchange reaches its climax when, prompted by Jimin’s motioning upward, the camera tilts up. On its way back down, viewers face a sudden vacuum of sound before a raw, trumpet-heavy rhythm sets in and all hell breaks loose. There’s a cut on every beat, and the camera turns and another BTS member or some different triangle formation is suddenly up in viewers’ faces. Going from medium-high drone shots, to tight, flattened shots, to even tighter shots of faces, the camera traverses all manner of distances. It turns, tilts, and maneuvers so the viewer feels like they’re a curveball that’s been hurled at the group. There is not a single moment of rest. The whole scene comes across as a hype goth parade, with the hype coming from both the dancers and the camera. The camera, an active participant in the shot, becomes a competitor for our attention and even detracts from the intensity of the dance. Regardless, there is a case to be made that both their energies combined drives this “kinetic manifesto” to its peak.

And then… we’re back to singing. But it’s different now because the soundlessness of the climax rang so true that now we hear it even when it’s not there. When they all sing together, when all seven of BTS’s voices combine and merge in final scene, it sounds like the trumpets blaring from those 30 seconds. The magic of that scene carries over and through to the end.

— Staff writer Nuri Bhuiyan can be reached at nuri.bhuiyan@thecrimson.com.