Music Videos

Music Videos

There are three main types of music videos:

Performance Based- This type concentrates mainly on the artist performing in a studio or a stage. Artists such as Adele and U2 utilise this style of video a lot.

Narrative Based- This type of video revolves around a story and characters in the video. An example of this is Gorillaz- Feel Good Inc.

Abstract/Artistic- This is an unusual style of video and has abstract ideas and themes. An example of this is Christine and the Queens.

Nowadays, most popular music videos are a mix between performance and narrative videos.

Christian Metz model of genre development

Experimental: This stage is where techniques and styles are first explored.

-       Gus Visser- First ever music video. This video was very simplistic and used simple techniques such as a static middle shot of the artist who was centred in the picture as he was the main focus of the video.

Classic: These music videos established certain conventions in its most successful period.

-       Michael Jacksons Thriller is an example of this and is now seen as an iconic music video.

Parody: This is when something famous is mimicked in a comedic way.

-       Weird Al Jankovic’s Eat it is an example of this.

Deconstruction: This is when a video takes elements and ideas from a previous video but in a slightly different way.

-       Madonna “Material Girl” is a deconstruction of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Question1:

Quite a few aspects of the Hard Days Night performance are used in mainstream, modern day music videos. For example, camera shots such as a close up of the instruments and close ups of the artists singing. The slow pans to show the band members are also used frequently in modern videos. As well as this, the video uses conventional camera shots such as an establishing shot to show where the video is taking place.

Question 2:

MTV in the 1980s was the first tv show of its kind. This was its main lure as people who were big fans of music had a channel they could use to listen to music 24/7. Also around this time, videos such as Thriller and Video killed the radio star were made and shown on the channel, which made the artists more money through MTV.

Question 3:

Madonna uses lots of visual aspects of the Marilyn Monroe musical scene. Props that were borrowed include the dress worn, which is basically exactly the same as well as the jewellery. The back up dancers are also wearing the same costumes: Black suits. They are also holding cut out hearts behind Madonna, which was a main visual idea in the Marilyn Monroe sketch. The setting used in both of the videos are very similar. They are both plain pink backgrounds. Madonna and Marilyn’s body language is also very similar. They both are trying to be seductive and are seen as appealing.