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Music Video Conventions
So ultimately Videos are definitely helping musicians, and record labels make money. But what is important content for a music video to include; and how is it structured?
Music Videos can be classified into 3 distinct groupings:
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Narrative Clips - Tell a story, feature characters and plot
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Performance Clips - focus on the performance of the band
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Conceptual Clips - based on a central theme. Sometimes they are just a juxtaposition of jumbled images.
Clips can be any mixture of the three. In this respect they give remarkable freedom to filmmakers to experiment with technical elements or concepts. The videos can either align with the lyrics in telling a story, or give meaning to lyrics, or be more abstract and unrelated
Join the forum And share examples of each style of music video.
Narrative, Performative or conceptual.
Different styles or genres within Film, Television and Media Arts exhibit certain traits and characteristics. We come to expect certain formats and often find joy and familiarity of these expectations. For example in a horror, you would expect things like low key lighting, claustrophobic, unrevealing close-ups and villainous characters. In a Science-Fiction film, futuristic unfamiliar settings, civilisation in crisis and industrial sound effects. Music videos also have a set of expected conventions.
Andrew Goodwin's Theory on Music Videos outlines the following traits
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Have a link between visuals & lyrics (compliment, contradict or amplify)
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Have a link between visuals & music (compliment, contradict or amplify)
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Have certain genre characteristics Eg. Horror (Michael Jacksons - Thriller)
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Have intertextual references (reference other films, television and pop culture)
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Contain notions of looking and voyeurism
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Include demands of the record label
We can also add to this the technical traits common in music videos of:
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Synchronised editing or action.
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On beat editing
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Short shot length
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Heavy use of tracking dollies/ gliding camera angles
LINK BETWEEN VISUALS AND LYRICS
This video has clear links from the lyrics to the dance movements. Eg "Put a Ring on it", she signals towards her ring finger.
This video tries to improve our engagement by directly showing the lyrics on screen as they are sung. By assisting in the learning of the songs lyrics, the audience are more inclined to sing along and make a connection.
STAR ICONOGRAPHY
Some artists have a unique icon that becomes synonymous with them.
Eg. Michael Jacksons, white shoes, fingerless gloves, leather jacket or fedora hat.
Can you think of any other artists that have created their own iconography / style / image? It could be a dramatic hair colour or style, or a specific article of clothing that becomes iconic to them.
VOYUERISM
There are two elements that are often dictated by the record label in order to try and maximise the selling potential. Both are to do with the notion of looking. The first is to include many closeups of the performing artists to make them more personable and intimate with us the viewer. The performer will often also look directly into camera. This is often referred to as 'breaking the forth wall', the idea that the camera lens is a barrier into a story world. Most other visual storytelling positions the audience on the outside looking it. But when a character on screen looks into the camera, as is done in many music videos, it invites the viewer in.
The other is the voyeristic aspect, or the concept of gazing in. This premise is on the grounds that 'sex sells!' Women are more often than not, objectified in music videos in order to gain the most views possible from the 12-25year old male demographic. Shots hold on the female body for extended periods, sexualising and objectifying, even cropping the womans head from shot, and clothing is scant.
Often when this is flipped, and males are the object of the gaze, it is treated in a more comical or humourous sense. This makes apparent the discrepancies in constructed societal norms, which can, and should be challenged.
Shania Twains music video for 'Man I Feel Like a Woman' subverts traditional representations, by parodying Robert Palmers, 'Addicted to Love'.
INTER-TEXTUALITY
This expression of other peoples work, or taking familiar creative work and appropriating them is know as an inter-textual reference. (Text within a text).
Eg. Iggy Azalea song, 'Fancy' pays homage to the 1995 film, 'Clueless'. As you can see, the costuming, setting and storylines are direct copies. Another is the way Michael Jackson's, 'Thriller' utilised conventions from the Zombie/Horror sub-genre.
EXPERIMENTATION
Despite music videos having a set of established conventions, the short format and creativity of musical artists allows for tremendous experimentation. Pushing the boundaries of filmmaking form can often serve as a method of being memorable and garnering hits. Amazing visual effects, concepts or humour are effective. The following are clips that have attempted something different, and may even serve as inspiration for later in the semesters studies when you will make your own music videos.
Take on Me, is an oldie, but impressive rotor-scoping animation even for todays standards. One of the first animations of its kind.
This clip uses stop-motion animation to create something rather unique.
I know.... Kylie Minogue.... give it a chance though, because it escalates quickly. Filmed by famed French director Michel Gondry it is a very impressive technical feat, where they had the camera on a robotic track that repeated the same movement timings exactly with the chorus. The performers were very carefully choreographed.
The Pharcyde's, Drop takes a simple concept, and executes it well. The singers hired phonics (language specialists) to learn how to mouth their lyrics phonically backwards. Yes that's right, they spoke in reverse. They performed in reverse, so that when the footage was played backwards, the lip-sync lined up. Made for some interesting movements.
Willow used animated sequences that they projected onto a blank set. They built a treadmill into the floor so that the singer could seemingly walk through the animated backgrounds.
The final examples are all from the musical artist 'Ok Go'. Over the past decade they have mastered the art of choreographed performance in a variety of creative ways.
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