Music Video

There are three main types of music video: Performance

                                                                Narrative      

                                                                Concept

The main conventions:

Performance - Main shots featured are that of the artist(s) performing.

- Often shows a live stage performance with shots cutting from the audience to the artist.

- Can be the artist's in "real life" situations e.g warming up, talking, fooling around.

- Includes lots of close ups of the artist

- There is often a particular visual style that goes with a artist (a motif) e.g particular clothing, props etc.

- Usually an artist appears to perform in an unusual place - all lip synched e.g a field or rooftop.

I have chosen the Jonas Brother's - Fly With Me as my example music video to anlayse.
We can see that there are many close up's of the artists.































This screenshots clearly show the artist on stage at a rehearsal performing. The music video also contains the band interacting with their fans (01:46 - 01:48) and messing around and having fun backstage.

Narrative - A narrative based music video mainly focuses on a complete narrative following the duration of the song. The storyline tends to be followed throughout the music video concluding with no loose ends, the narrative has reached an equilibrium. Many narrative based music videos play out like a short film. 

I have chosen Katy Perry - The One That Got Away as an example of a narrative based music video.

The narrative follows an elderly woman who is looking back on her life, the video starts with a close up shot of the protagonist as an elderly woman followed by a flashback of her past as an 18 year old. The main theme throughout this narrative is love, the two teenagers are quite clearly infatuated. As the video plays on the narrative soon develops and we see a fight between the two lovers. The male character grabs his stuff and leaves. As an a audience we expect to see a happy ending and this hope of a happy ending seems to be realistic as the male protagonist (1:37) finds Katy's veil and reminisces old times. As he decides to turn around he looks up and sees a boulder in the road, ultimately leading him to swerve and drive off the cliff. Our hopes of a happy ending are crushed, just like his car.

Concept - Concept music videos tend to feature thematic/symbolic ideas, for example,  it may feature a certain ideology or location with props that may connote a certain theme. The editing style and pace of editing is also used to help infer the meaning and build up the tension to a climatic reveal. Concept music videos are often known to push boundaries in regards to the actual concept or the micro elements that make up a music video. You would expect to see experimentative ideas within a concept music video and rather outrageous concepts. Within a concept music video you should also expect to see an exploration into different themes and concept ideas that will often be displayed in different genres of music.  

As you can see in this video by OK Go, we can see that they have used the idea of exercise and treadmills as their main focal point in their music video. They have created a whole dance routine completely based on the movement of the treadmill and slight choreography in helping them achieve the right movement for their dance.