Music Videos

Theories

Sven Carlsson Sven Carlsson believes that music videos can be categorised into

two types: Performance - The artist themselves singing, dancing or playing an

instrument throughout the video, often lip-syncing the lyrics.

Narrative Styles of Performance such as;Commercial Exhibitionist – The artist promoting their lifestyle, clothing, or other products, aiming for fans to aspire to them.

Sven Carlsson Televised Bard – An artist featuring in their music video expressing their inner emotions throughout the song.

Electronic Shaman - Performers are not visible throughout the video, the story is told through others.

All types of music video will be a Subjective, meaning to be open to the viewers interpretation, or Objective, with a definite meaning behind it.

Within my groups genre choice - ‘Indie’ many of the videos are objective, however, some of these may have subjective features.

Sven Carlsson- Many music videos Encode a message or belief within them,

showing to the audience a deeper meaning to the song rather than just exposing the artist.

All music videos also have a large amount of Artistic Ambition behind them. The videos will be fueled with the intentions of the artist, and their record label. Dependent on the genre of the video, the audience often must decode the meaning and intention of the video through the different use of Camera shots, Lighting, etc..

The majority of modern music videos are Hybrid, meaning a mix of two different types.

Andr

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Goodwin had many ideals as to what a

music videos should include.

- Genre Characteristics: all genres must

have certain conventions in order for the

audience to be able to identify the genre.

- Intertextuality: referencing other

productions and films within the music

video, for instance, taking a rock video,

and enforcing horror influences, to interlink

a upcoming film with an old or new song.

- Voyeurism: This term means to Objectify

men/women seductively in order to attract

the male/female gaze. This style is often

used to sell an artist or their image, by

using sex appeal, youthful audiences are

often more drawn to viewing the video.

These types of video are controversial as

many higher figures see these videos to be

selling adulthood in an unrealistic fashion.

Andrew Goodwin Goodwin believes in three different styles of Music Videos:

- Illustrative: This being the simplest and easier concept for a music video, portraying the literal meaning of the song lyrics through a visual form. This is seen through Owl City’s video for ‘Fireflies’,

when the word ‘Fireflies’ is sung, the word appears on the screen of a toy.

- Amplification: This style uses both performance and narration using connotations to suggest what is going on or the performers aim within the video. For example, within Kanye West’s video for ‘Homecoming’, Kanye doesn’t clearly show where his home is,

however we can infer that by walking around a city his is familiar within, it is home for him.

- Disjunctive: This concept intentionally ignores the meaning of the song and the genre, trying to create a whole new set of meanings.

This style of music video doesn’t tend to make sense, and can often be rather abstract. For instance, Hannah Wants and Chris Lorenzo’s ‘Rhymes’ videos, where all the videos is based around

the 80’s pop culture and has pornographic connotations.

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Record Label Control is a restriction in

which the artists themselves do not

have creative control over their image

and the vision of their music video is

mainly based around the vision of the

record label. Record labels help to create the overall

Representation for an artist by creating

a visual style that reoccurs through

their work, featuring several close ups

in music videos, helping them to

promote their image. Artists have their own Representation,

in which all of their promotional

material is based around. These representations show

development through Meta-Narrative;

the development of the artist through

their career.