Codes and Conventions of Music Videos

From the music videos that I have seen, it appears that there are three main types of music videos:

• Illustrative - An illustrative music video has three options - a narrative video, a live performance or a mixture of the two. It is so called an illustrative video as it illustrates the song in a way that merely listening to it couldn't. When it falls into the narrative category, the director will tend to use a storyline which fits in with the lyrics or tempo of the song. It visualises the music. The live performance scenario speaks for itself, where the director will take snippets from live shows from the past and create a montage. When the video is narrative, it will tend to follow the three act structure.


• Amplification - This form of the music video can involve the illustrative sector of videos, however the video is much more complex. It is amplified due to the director not simply relating to the lyrics or song meaning. These videos tend to be creative and full of strange and surreal ideas. Having said this, the video will still have something to do with the song, whether it be the beat, rhythm, sound or any connotation that may be in place.


• Artistic / Disjunctive- The video will generally have nothing to do with the song or the lyrics. The video's main purpose is to entertain the audience and occasionally give a comedic value. These videos are at a disjuncture from the song and therefore they are irrelevant.

All music videos tend to last the length of the song, however in some cases there is an early narrative before the song has started, during the song as a midpoint to move the plot forward, or even at the end which serves as the denouement. This is almost always found in the narrative side of music videos.

Narrative

Narrative videos are rarely complex or too complicated. This is because they need to advertise the song to the audience and if it is too complicated then the audience could lose interest and therefore change the channel before they have found out who the band / artist is. These videos need to contain a certain level of repeatability.

Musical Synaesthesia relates to the elements of the song which determine the overall concept of the song and video. For example certain music reflects certain moods and therefore the director will catch onto this fact and ram it home - a certain beat or instrument can be associated with a certain class group or area in the world. The director of the video will 'leech' onto the musical synaesthesia and use it for their advantage during a narrative video as this links in with the musical genre and will keep the audience's interest focused.

Performance Videos

More often than not this will happen on the stage in front of thousands of fans, usually at a festival or an intimate gig. The camera tends to focus mainly on the frontman / woman of the band as he / she is the most famous of the lot. There is original footage with the track layered on top to give an authentic, clean sound which the audience will find much easier and more pleasant to listen to. The camera angle changes, and we find ourselves looking at strange angles to keep us interested. A favourite would seem to be the Dutch angle (canted) and whip pans panning across the whole stage.

In cases where there is a solo artist performing the video will occasionally have a choreographed dance routine where the artist will perform a routine whilst miming the lyrics to the song. The soloist will, in cases where the narrative and performance are entwined, also be the leading figure in the narrative as the attention needs to be on them as they are selling their music and their songs.