Key Features pt 2

Key Features of a Music Video

There are different ways in which Music Videos are portrayed as; either that of the music video being primarily performance based, narrative based or concept based and how each of the elements of each are used in it.

There are three ways in which music videos work to promote a song:

Illustrate- Music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics and genre, this is the most common style of music videos.

Amplify- This is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly shown through the video and drummed into our vision.

Disjuncture- This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored.

Songs do not give us the complete narrative

We only tend to get the gist of the meaning of the song and then tend to make our own idea of what is being told. 

Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common narrative. It is important in their role of advertising. 

Music videos should have coherent repeatability. Narrative and performance work hand in hand. It makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over without losing interest.

The artist acting as both narrator and participant helps to increase the authenticity however the lip sync and other mimed actions remains the heart of music videos. The audience need to believe that this is real. 

An example of this can be seen in the music video of "Leave right now" by Will Young.