Styles, Conventions and Techniques of Music Video

The Styles, Conventions & Techniques of Music Videos

Every music video has different ways they stand out, whether they're made with live footage of the artist(s) playing the song or made with a completely absurd narrative that has almost nothing to do with the song. In this essay i will be exploring the different Styles, Conventions and Techniques of music videos.

Styles/Conventions

Narrative/Animation/Allusion

A lot of music videos follow a narrative which is often based on lyrics from the song. The narrative can be loosely or tightly based upon the lyrics or the narrative can even be made to contradict the songs' lyrics.

Pop Rock/Pop Punk trio Busted's 2003 song "Year 3000" fits into a few of the categories I will be talking about in this essay, these are mainly Narrative and Animation but they also use Allusion .

Narrative

The songs narrative in the video is heavily based on the lyrics, most thing we see are a direct reference to the lyrics. A couple of examples would be at the start of the song they say "Stood there, was my neighbor, called Peter, and a Flux Capacitor" and "He told me he'd built a Time Machine like the one in that film I've seen".

Animation

During the video a mix of both live action and digital animation is used if you look at the pictures above you can see an animated cat that has been run over by "Peter's" "Flux Capacitor" and a animated skyline. The picture below that shows a blueprint for time travel which is animated so the car drives through the portal. As the trio travel to the year 3000 their soundings outside the car are animated using a green-screen, this style is then used until they reach the stage where their older selves were supposed to perform then predominantly live action is used with the occasional animated character in the crowed.

Allusion

As I mentioned above the video for Year 3000 also alludes to different things in the lyric and narrative. The first of these is that the song itself heavily references the Back to the Future films. We can see this as the chosen form of time travel the trio use is a car (like the DeLorean from the films) which is referenced to as a Flux Capacitor, one of the main time travel components of Back to the Future's DeLorean time machine. Also around halfway through the video the lyrics say "Everybody bought our seventh album, it had outsold Michael Jackson" which is allusion to the artist, also at this point in the song we see an animated Michael Jackson busking outside Busted's concert performing his signature moonwalk for money.

In-Concert/"As Live" Footage

Simply enough both "in-concert" and "as live" Music videos show/portray the artist(s) performing the song, however the way in which they do that differ. "In-concert" music videos are put together with footage of the artist(s) playing the song live, this can be done with footage from a single performance or from multiple performances on a tour. "As-live" music videos on the other hand are made to look like a true performance, but often the artist(s) will lip-sync to the studio version of the song and the recreation will be directed off scene.

In-Concert

An example of a In-Concert music video is Busted's 2016 single Coming Home. This song was the band's first official new single to be released since their break up in 2004. The song technically has two music videos.

The first was a narrative/lyric video that mainly served to advertise their 2016 comeback/nostalgia tour "Pigs Can Fly", this video was taken down after the tour finished and replaced with another video. The second video was released after their "Pigs Can Fly" tour had ended and was put together with footage recorded live as they played, the video was also spliced with behind-the-scenes footage from the tour.

"As Live"

During Busted's 2002-2005 run they very often used a mix of narrative and as live performances in their videos, though for this section I've chosen just to look at the video for "Air Hostess" a track from their second studio album "A present for everyone". The narrative of the video is as the trio are leaving a plane they spy two Air hostesses making their way to their flight, attracted the trio run after them, sneak onto the plane and proceed to mess around and flirt with them to try and impress them. throughout the video we also see the band "perform" the song in an airplane hangar and on the plane itself. These sections of the video are "as live" as they would have been directed off screen.

Surrealist

Surrealist videos are usually quite unconventional or "out there". Unlike with other forms of music video a surrealist or absurdist video will have little to nothing to do with narrative or relate to the songs lyrics at all. 

Impressionist

Impressionist  music videos again may not have much relevance to a song lyrics but are more artistic, looking to capture the emotion and feelings of the viewer. These videos will often use light, soft colours.

Techniques

Lip- Sync

Lip-syncing in a music video is the technique of miming the lyrics to the song. This may happen for different reasons such as, an actor can mime the lyrics if they are appearing as the main character/the artist in the video. If the artist is the one in the video they can mime their lyrics to make acting the narrative of the video easier. miming the lyrics in the video can make it easier to sync the audio and video up during editing. During editing parts of the video may use a slow motion affect over-layed over normal paced video. This effect is used in Busted's song "Who's David" from their 2nd studio album "A Present for Everyone during the parts of the video when one of the three are singing.

Editing

Music videos can be edited in different ways, as they're not held to the conventional ways of film-making, which is why we see so much of range of music video styles.

Cutting to the Beat

This is the process of editing a music video so the shots are in rhythm with the beat of the song. For example the first 8 seconds of "Take On Me" by aha each shot is lined up with a beat on a drum.

Post-Production Effects

Visual effects can be added to music videos in the edit to make the video more in-depth and impressive. Some effects include green-screen which is used in Busted's Year 3000 to show the animated future/background of the world, rotoscope animation is used in Aha's Take On Me this is where live action is drawn over and made into an animated style, CGI effects Robbie William's Rock DJ features the artist stripping in front of women to try and gain their attention, after losing all his clothes her proceeds to tear off his skin then all his flesh until only his skeleton is left.

Split Screen

This is an effect where multiple separate events are shown simultaneously on screen. This effect can be used to show different part of a narrative at the sometime.

Camera Movements

It is very hard to make an interesting music video with only still shots. To keep audience's attention and make the video dynamic camera movements such as pans, tracks, tilts, as well as crab shots.
In studio session video for Busted's 2016 remake of one of their 2004 songs the camera never stays still and constantly crabs back and forth whilst also panning and tilting, this gives a dynamic feel to a video which otherwise is just 3 people sitting and playing instruments and singing. By creating the dynamic feel the viewers attention is grabbed and it feels like there is actually a lot going on in the video when really there isn't.

Camera Angles/Shot Types

Different shot types, lengths and angles can help a filmmaker create meaning and set the tone within a video. At the start of Bastille's Pompeii we see the singer (the stories protagonist) standing on top of a run down looking building staring out at the LA skyline. To help set the tone of the video the first 14 seconds comprise of only 2 shots, one a distance shot slowly panning and zooming in to the singer on top of the roof, and the other a mid shot behind the singer looking out over the skyline, both are quite lengthy and slow shots this coupled with the fact that there is only ambient sound over this part of the video informs us the tone of the video is sad/dark.