- Performance: Lip synch, live performance, choreographed / free style dance, playing instrument
- Narrative: storyline / theme/ motifs; linear / non-linear
- Conceptual: abstract set of motifs that may have no obvious link to the lyric
This is frequently crossover between these, in particular performance and narrative
Exam "set" music videos
For the exam, you will need to know two music videos in depth:
- A conventional performance / narrative style video
- A conceptual post-modern style video
Things to analyse (form and convention)
- Camera: angles, shot size, camera movement, framing
- Editing: cutting rate/ rhythm (to the rhythm / beat?), types of cut (matched, jump, cutaways), transitions, effects (including Special Effects SFX)
- Mise en scene: costume, make up, props, location, lighting
- Lip synch and authorage / star quality, which links to…
- Representation: of the star, sexuality, gender, ethnicity / culture, subculture and genre, personality, celebrity and consumerism
- Audience: and how the video “positions” them; the male gaze; voyeurism
- Authorage: artist's distinct visual style
Jorja Smith - The One
The clip finds the 21 year old in a deeply emotional state of reflection,
- Repeated close-up shots
- Love/heartbreak, "The One"
- Performance: lip synch women into the narrative - naturalistic
- Narrative:
- non-linear
- lose narrative
- cross-cutting between three loose strands:
- bedroom
- outside the bath
- bath (naked)
- Angles: high angle - vulnerability (links to bath)
Beyonce - Formation
- Post-modern song - mix and match (highly styled/home footage/archive footage)
- Performance and conceptual: culture, ethnic identity
- New Orleans - mardi gras, floods
- Martin Luther King
- Afro - daughter
- Gender - female dancers - authorage (dancing)
- Feminist - objectified/male gaze #
- Cutting rate - sometimes in synch, sometimes discordant
- Mostly long shots to capture the dancing
Post-modernism
By nature hard to design, but might include:
- A mix and match aesthetic, taking influences from a range of genres
- “Look” is as important / more important than “meaning”
- Blurring of time, space
- Unconventional, highly non-linear narrative
- Mixing up types of narration, for example first and third, which might lead to…
- Breaking the fourth wall
- Intertextuality: when there are deliberate references made to other media products, and the music video is only understood if this reference is understood by the audience.
- Mixing fantasy and reality (simulacra- Baudrillard)
Goodwin's framework for analysis
1) A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, which illustrate, reinforce or contradict the lyrics.
2) Thought beats: seeing the sounds (the relationship between the music and the visuals, which illustrate, amplify or contradict the music.)
3) Genre-related style and iconography present.
Iconic - instantly recognisable
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