what is a music video?

What is a music video?

To put it simply, a music video is just a short film which incorporates a song and visuals which is made for their promotional or artistic reasons. The original use of a music video was simply a marketing technique that artists used to promote the sale of their music. Now, music videos have advanced even further in that artists are now focusing a lot more on the visual concept of the video in order to instigate more interest in the audience. Artists can now express their own stories or beliefs or interests in the video, connecting themselves to the audience and therefore gaining a closer relationship with their fans. However, music videos are also about establishing what audience the artists wants to have as their fan-base. Depending on the style of the video, the artist can identify a particular audience and even modify their target group. Music videos give the artist an opportunity to establish themselves as well as their music and their brand as well as allowing them to either set or alter the conventions of their genre. For instance, a rap artist may decide to include more computer generated effects in their visuals to make their video seem more dubstep based if they want to move more towards that genre in the future. 

However, when you make a music video, it can be presented in one of three main styles: performance, narrative and concept. A performance based music video is all about the actual musical aspect of the video; whether the artist has included singing and dancing in it. This video style will predominantly use the artist throughout the video where they may be either just singing/miming the lyrics or acting as a character in a narrative. If the artist is an upcoming band, it is exceedingly beneficial for them to use this style of video as it allows them to make a video of themselves performing on stage, which is quite low-budget. This style of music video is often used with the rock genre as there are often quite a lot of members and instruments and therefore this is the easiest style of video to use. A quintessential example is Green Day's famous song "American Idiot" where the video is simply of the band performing the song with added visual effects as well as a bit of dancing and moving about from the band members. 

A narrative based music largely contains shots that are cut together to tell a story and the plot of it is usually based upon the lyrics that the artist uses. This style of music video is often used when the song is used in a movie and then the music video is then based upon scenes from that movie cut into it. Narrative based videos are often used for the indie genre as love stories are an extremely typical storyline. However, you may also get other genres such as electronic who make narrative based videos, however they involve other people, generally celebrities, in it. Major Lazer, the electronic music group created by Diplo, has shown the use of a narrative music video in "Powerful". Ellie Goulding collaborated with the group as well as Tarrus Riley and they both were included in the music video, acting, as well as singing. This example also demonstrates how some music videos contain a mixture of different styles, whereas some only one; in this case, both electronic and pop.

The final style is concept; this is where the artist is selling the audience an idea/theme/ideology through their video. The idea itself is generally quite unique or even surreal as this way is will attract the audience and draw them in. The uniqueness could be from the actual content, such as a specific way the people in it are dancing or it could be from the technical aspects such as the editing (eg visual effects). This style of music video is quite contrasting to the other two as they are both quite stereotypical and conventional. However, concept videos allow the artist to actually utilize their imagination much more and therefore connect better with the audience by keeping them interested with the fresh ideas the artist is giving them. However, artists who use this style are careful to not make their video too different from others in the genre as their target audience will tend to stay away from niche content.

I am now going to analyze a music video "I Bet my Life" by the American rock band, Imagine Dragons. It is a narrative based music video as it illustrates a real-life story based upon the vocalist of the band. Through both the lyrics and the visuals, the video tells us how Dan Reynolds, the lead singer, is apologizing to his parents for not choosing the life that they wanted for him: "I know I took the path that you would never want for me". The video would strongly appeal to the target audience (around ages 15-30) as the whole concept of being a loose canon teenager who does not want to conform to expectations given to them by parents is extremely relatable for that age group; they are either going through it currently or have already been through it. Another reason the video appeals to the target audience is because the video features a male celebrity, Dan Deehan, who plays the younger version of Dan Reynolds. Dan Dehaan is a famous celebrity, particularly amongst (females) aged between 15-25. Therefore, a portion of the audience will most likely be fans of Dehaan and not Imagine Dragons but it will increase the band's audience, particularly if fans of Dehaan then share the video around to their friends on social networking sites.

However, even though it is in the style of a narrative, the video still adheres to the rock genre convention; for example, the video features the band members at the start of the video which is useful in establishing who the band actually are. Narrative based music videos for rock songs are actually very conventional of the genre as often the band want to visualize the meaning behind their lyrics to the audience. This means that the scenes throughout the video are all mediated to match the lyrics so the audience really understand the message the band is trying to get across.

The video starts with an establishing shot of a green landscape, which instantaneously tells us that it will be based in the country, which connotes family time. The setting of the countryside is quite conventional of the alternative rock genre as this location is easier to use in order to bring meaning to the lyrics, as a lot of the topics of the rock genre are family/friendship/relationships. The next shot is our first glimpse of people involved in the video. One common convention of a rock music video is showing a lot of facial expressions on the characters and in this video we can see that; the characters are shown laughing with one another. This signifies a close relationship between them and connotes once again, family. 

However, in this wide shot, the lead singer is 

positioned away from the rest of the band and their family members. This signifies the detachment the artist feels towards his own family but perhaps family in general. Whilst the other characters' facial expressions show happiness, Dan Reynolds' is quite despondent in comparison.  This shot is right at the beginning and therefore useful in roughly establishing a storyline for the audience; they will work out the narrative will logically be from the lead singer's perspective as he is the one presented as detached from everyone else. 

There is a big use of handheld shots in the video as they give a much more dramatic feel to a shot. Therefore making the camera slightly shaky in parts of this music video gives the feel that firstly, there is a lot of drama involved and secondly, that someone is actually watching as some of the hand-held shots have been taken at a distance. The scene after Dan Dehaan is introduced makes good use of hand-held shots which is more effective as it is a fight scene and therefore it seems a lot more realistic if the camera is shaking as a fight would not be steady and calm but rather quite erratic. The music video makes use of Roland Barthes' enigma codes as within this part of the narrative hermeneutic codes have been used to keep the audience guessing as to who exactly these two boys fighting are and why exactly they are fighting in the first place; they will not discover the full answer till they finish watching the music video. 

The music video has been edited so that the cuts between shots are very fast-paced. In a music video where there is an interpretive narrative and the beats of the music are moderately fast, it is evidently beneficial to use this type of cutting as then it keeps the audience more immersed in the music video and keeps the thing running smoothly together.

The costumes that the characters are wearing are quite vintage; one boy is shown wearing braces over a plaid shirt with three quarter length trousers whilst the character shown playing as young Dan Reynolds is wearing an old fashioned white shirt. Using more old-fashioned clothing helps to convey that this is not set in present time but rather an analepsis of earlier memories in the lead singer's life. Particularly as the shots right at the beginning of the video show the characters wearing modern clothing; we can make a logical contrast between two different time periods. The use of the entire video being set as an analepsis makes it far more interesting for the audience as it is not only different to modern everyday things you constantly see but also it is a flashback to an earlier time in the lead singer's life and therefore a lot more personal, which is more appealing to the audience.

The video makes use of both natural lighting but also low-key lighting. As there is a lot of mystery and drama incorporated in the narrative, using low-key lighting is beneficial as it adds to the suspense and enigma surrounding the video. For instance, throughout the scene of Dan in the underwater house, low-key is used, and at one point it is so dark that we only see Dan as a silhouette. This again is quite enigmatic as we cannot clearly see what is happening in the scene and we cannot see the character's facial expression, therefore it is quite detaching for the audience. The use of dark colors is quite conventional in the rock genre as they match the connotations and meanings behind the lyrics. 

To conclude, it is clear that within different genres of music there are different styles and conventions incorporated in the music video. The chosen style the artist decides to use heavily relies on what they want the audience to take from the video: for example, if the song is very meaningful to the artist, such as "I Bet My Life", then it is more probable that a narrative style music video will be used. Whereas, if the song is just another ordinary song, the artist may decide to use a performance style music video as they do not want to put much emphasize on any unthought of deeper meaning. Having said all this, I think that using a narrative style in my own music video would be a lot more interesting and appealing to the audience as storylines capture and trap a person's attention more easily. I personally feel that narrative style music videos really bring the song alive and give it real meaning and therefore would prefer to use this style. Overall, I think music videos hold strong purpose in giving the audience something more and therefore they can connect more with the artist, especially if the music video holds strong meaning or ideologies.