Music Video Conventions

In today's lesson we learnt about music video conventions...

There are three types of music videos, Performance, narrative and concept. Here are some examples to present these styles of video.


Narrative music video - Lyrics are often reflected within the story, this style of video relies on imagery and mise en scene to produce a story for the audience to follow. A Narrative video is often used in slower songs and tend to be love stories.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's song Same Love has a narrative music video portrayed to the audience. The song talks about the issues of gay rights and was recorded during the campaign for Washington Referendum which upon approval in 2012 legalised same-sex marriage in Washington State.  The song has a powerful message which is that all love is the 'Same Love'. The video follows the life of a gay man from birth to death. Throughout the video we see the difficulties the man faces with his sexuality and sympathise with him. We can tell this is a Narrative music video as their is numerous settings, angles, shots, and characters all used to create a story line for the audience to follow, which does link to the lyrics of the song. For example in the song it mentions religion and then imagery in the video of the holy cross will be shown when these lyrics are being mentioned, this is to show how the lyrics of the song are a portraying a story. 


Concept music video - This style of video is based around a single idea or concept which is normally considered unusual and obscure, even surreal to an audience in some cases. The unusual element within the content of the video is usually what attracts many poeple into viewing the video. No particular genre or type of music is more likely to use concept videos, a range of artists coming from different genres of music have used a concept/artistic music video.


Adventure of a lifetime by Coldplay is an example of a concept music video. This is because the video is artistic and uses animation to create a different viewing of a 'stereotypical' music video. The artists are not seen in the music video instead they are represented through the personalities of animated monkey's this makes the video obscure and a unique viewing experience. Within the video the animated Coldplay monkey's dance and sing to the lyrics in an animated juggle setting.


Performance music video - This is the most common style of music video. They often feature the singer or band actually performing within the music video, either in front of an audience or just performing to the camera for the purpose of the video. The aim of a performance  style is to create an in-concert experience for the viewer. This can include the artist dancing and lip singing to their song

Ariana Grande uses a performance style video for her song Dangerous Women. Throughout the video Ariana is the main focus and is seen to be performing to the camera, she is also the only one seen in the whole of video which draws all the attention to her, the purpose of this highlights her star image.






Final Website link

https://hollyjconnell.wixsite.com/nova  - Final link to Nova's website.