Music video

Definition

• “A music video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.”

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video)

Promotional

• Promotional music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of artists music. They range from mass appeal to controversial but with the same intent of getting as much talk as possible about the song and also usually feature the artist more frequently in the video.

Examples

• Miley Cyrus' video for Wrecking Ball became a most controversial and viral video due to it featuring her swinging naked in a wrecking ball and licking a sledgehammer.

• The video became the fastest viewed video of all time, reaching 100,000,000 views in just six days.

Foo Fighters – The Pretender. A performance based video with the band being the focal point of each shot for almost the whole video.

Biffy Clyro – bubbles. A performance based video with every shot being of one/multiple members of the band.

Artistic

• An artistic video is slightly less conventional than a promotional music video and whereas a traditional music video may just be a combination of music and imagery an artistic video tends to be more of an experimental or abstract short film.

Examples

M.I.A. - born free, featured a world where redheads were the victims of a brutal genocide. Removed from YouTube after less than a day but was praised by critics for “the way it bravely tackled its weighty subject matter” (etcanada)

Nexus.Life.Death - Three concept videos directed by Frank Nasso which accompanied Mudvayne’s self titled album depicting “Satan's grisly attempts in conceiving his first human child on Earth.” (IMDB)

Keane – Bed shaped. Stop motion animation, the video focus’ on a bedraggled man with the members of the band only making a brief background appearance.

30 seconds to mars – hurricane. A 12 minutes experimental short film taking place in what is said to be a dream exploring themes such as violence, sex & religion. Although the band members are heavily featured as they are used more to push the narrative than promote the artist.

Conclusion

• In conclusion the content of a music video depends on its purpose whether its used as a advert for the artist or used as a story to compliment the song. And depending on the purpose the amount the artist is featured as an artist will vary.