Music Video Styles - A2 Media Studies

Music Video Styles - A2 Media Studies

• 1.
  Music Videos
• 2.
  The purpose ofthe Music Video  Promotes a single and/or an album  Promotes the artist or band Creates, adapts or feeds into a ‘star image’  Audience entertainment  Helps to set the ‘meaning’ of a song through the use of images
• 3.
  Basic structures  In3-4 minutes a typical music video combines a mix of live performance, narrative, and other visual imagery including computer graphics and animation.  It does this to advertise the band/artist and song
• 4.
  Music Videos  Oftencontains a number of different elements:  Performance  Narrative  Concept: Thematic  Symbolic Idea based
• 5.
  Performance  Many musicvideos include performance of the artists as part of the video  It was from clips of performances that music videos developed  For example: Bon Jovi – You give love a bad name
• 6.
   Often containshots of the artists performing  Can be a live stage performance, with shots of artists and audience  Can be the artists in “real life” situations eg warming up, talking, fooling around  Often includes lots of close ups of the artist  There can be a particular visual style that goes with the artist (a motif) eg particular clothing, actions, props, type of images.  Often the artist can appear to perform in an unusual place - all lip-synched eg a field, a rooftop Performance
• 7.
  Narrative  Often thevideo tells a story either that features in the lyrics or is suggested in the lyrics eg girl dumps boy  This narrative can be like a Mini film, with a beginning, middle and end  Or it can suggest some links to a story  It can promote a film with clips form the film included telling a story  For example: Taylor Swift – You belong with me
• 8.
  Narrative  Because itis only 3-4 minutes it can be  very fast paced, lots of shots and cuts  use inter-textuality with films, tv and other videos  mimic other film and tv genre eg horror or sci fi  sometimes the story can contradict what is seen for effect  sometimes the artist is a part of the story, or an observer or completely separate
• 9.
  Concept  Thematic  Symbolic Idea based Narrative or performance is not the most dominate aspect.
• 10.
  Concept - Thematic There are lots of common themes in music videos  Depends on the genre of music  Eg Heavy metal bands go for perfomance dominated clips Rap has lots of “street” images dance routines are common for many female artist performances
• 11.
  Concept - Symbolic Use of lots of symbols to build up meaning eg graveyard…death  Lots of use of montage -lots of images to create meaning sometimes often contradictory  Lighting often used to suggest mood  Fast paced - often only a few seconds per shot to build up meanings
• 12.
  Concept – InterestingIdea  Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene dominates  Experimental use of camera/editing  Fast pace  Conspicuous lighting and cinematography  Often break the rules of continuity editing
• 13.
  Some Other Codesand Conventions  Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene  Cutting related to the rhythm of the music  Intercutting between performance and images or story  Experimental use of camera/editing (hand held camera, distortion of colours)  Often break the rules of continuity editing. Can use lots of jump cuts  Lots of use of digital effects