What is a Music Video - Miss Miller IMPROVE

What is a Music Video?

A music video is a short film integrating song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device to promote the sale of the song and the artist. There are many different purposes of music videos including some of the following :

1. To help the audience build a relationship with the artist
2. For the artist to express their personality and feelings through the music video
3. To tell a story to follow a narrative
4. To promote the artists song further
5. To show the different generic conventions of different types of music videos

There are three different styles of music videos, the first style being performance. This is where the music video contains mostly dancing, singing or acting from the artist themselves and this mainly showcases the artist's. For example, this style of music is used in Rhianna's music video Diamonds. The music video contains a large majority of performance which is shown through the use of Rhianna singing, dancing and acting towards the camera and showcasing her talent. This is to further gain the audience's attention and understanding that her talent as an artist is the way in which she promotes her song and music video and also her material. This style of music video helps the audience to build a relationship with the audience and also allows them to understand their personalities and the hidden messages in their videos more clearly.

A screenshot of Rihanna singing to the camera.

The next style is Narrative, this is where the music video will follow a narrative and a storyline to give a better understanding of the song or to express what the artist may have gone through themselves or how they may be feeling about a certain situation. It may also be shown through the choice of lyrics used and the actions of the actors or the artist themselves in the music video.

For example Wilkinson's Afterglow video is a narrative style of music video. It tells the story of a couples life over the first 5 years in their relationship. It helps to give a better understanding of the song as it is expressing the idea of being young and having the rest of your life to have fun and experience new things. This is conventional to music videos as the target audience can relate to these narratives which further promotes the artist and their material because they feel that they are able to relate to and build a relationship with the artist due to the realism that this creates for the target audience.

 The third style of music video is concept. This is where the music video sells the audience an idea or theme or sets a strong feeling towards an ideology. An example of a music video where the style of music video is concept is Pink's Stupid Girl music video. This music video presents the ideology of girls being stupid if they only care about their looks and appearance, it also tries to present women as being stupid if they do common cliches of women for example, doing things to their bodies such as having spray tans and boob jobs, they are then presented as bad drivers which is another cliche of women.

A screenshot from the music video of women shown to be bad drivers.

Route 94 - My Love

 

The video that I will be analysing is My Love by artist Route 94, this song is from the deep house, dance genre which is evident from the use of editing techniques used in the music video. The purpose of this music video is to help the artist to express their personality, characteristics and emotions towards the song and to also help the target audience to gather a better understanding of what the song may be about and what message the artist wants to portray by producing the video. Another purpose is to create a fun, bold and catchy song for the target audience to make it memorable and help the target audience to watch more of their material. The music video needs to be created in this way so it isaimed at a target audience of dancers and people who enjoy the club like atmosphere. By creating a music video with these elements it will ensure the target audience will enjoy the music and will rely on them as an artist to produce more of this fun and fast paced music which is ultimately promoting them as an artist and encouraging the audience to look for them for this type of music and material making them more of a well known artist.

The style of the music video is narrative as throughout the music video it is telling a story about a male and a female meeting and getting together at a club. This style of music video is used to help the audience to gain a better understanding of what the song is about and to also help make the genre of the music video clear as due to this narrative we can expect that this sort of scenario would happen in a club like atmosphere. This makes the audience aware of the artists personality and message that they want to portray to their target audience when creating the music video. This type of narrative gives the audience an idea of the characteristics of the artist making the artist seem fun and exciting which will get people from this type of audience in the mood and anticipating more material as they will begin to think about the good times they have had in club like situations and will want to hear more to take them back to the place they think of when listening to this music. 

The narrative is shown through the use of cinematography relaying the narrative to the audience. A variety of shots are used to clearly show different parts of the narrative. For example close up shots are used when the two characters are kissing to show that they are very intimate and clearly like each other. This is shown through the use of a variety of shots that focuses on various body parts which makes the music video quite provocative which fits in with the dance genre.

Due to the song being from the dance genre a lot of editing techniques are used to make the music video resemble a club like atmosphere. For example the lighting is low key until the character enters the club where the lights are very vibrant and energetic. The editing technique of using special effects which involves a thermal heat effect on all the characters within the music video creates an exciting and intriguing effect for the audience as they could imagine themselves in this situation making the artist seem more relatable to them. This also helps to resemble a club scene as you would expect to see people getting hot and sweaty from the hot and crowded atmosphere and also it resembles what people may feel like once they get involved in drinking alcohol or taking substances. This type of editing technique helps to represent the artist as quite rebellious and also fun and outgoing as this is portraying what he is like in his personal life when he goes out to clubs which the audience will enjoy to watch as they will feel as though they have a connection with the artist and understand them personally. It is showing the audience that he is constantly having a good time and this is portrayed in his videos which would make the target audience idolise him and want to be more like him, further promoting himself and his career.

There are various codes and conventions of the dance genre. Some of these include of:

•  Clubbing and party scenes
•  High heels, revealing clothes
•  Well groomed characters
•  Drinking, taking drugs
•  Dancing
•  Flashing lights
•  Fun atmosphere
•  UV paint
•  Special effects

These are some of the popular codes and conventions that are almost included within every dance music video, all these codes and conventions overall make the video resemble a clubbing and partying lifestyle which is relatable to the target audience of young adults aged 15-25. Most music videos of this genre follow this type of style to target a particular audience. The target audience that is targeted by this genre is people who enjoy to go out in clubs, get drunk and party. The dance style music video is produced in a way to resemble a club lifestyle as it will resemble the lifestyle of  those of the audience which is aiming for them to enjoy watching the music video more as they can relate to the particular settings and situations involved in these types of circumstances.
 
I have learnt from analysing this music video that the specific codes and conventions have to be followed in order to create a video of a certain type of genre and how to aim it at a target audience through the different elements of miss-en-scene. For example without the editing techniques of the special effects of thermal heat and lighting used in the My Love video by Route 94 the dance genre of the music video wouldn't be clearly recognisable and would therefore not appeal to the specific target audience of dance genre fans. I think that music videos are very effective as they have many different purposes that benefit the audience in many ways. For example they help portray an artist's certain feelings or intentions of why they created the song or they also help to build a relationship between the artist and the audience and also portray the artists personality through music.

I am considering the style of my music video to be narrative and performance as I think using elements of both of these styles will create a balanced yet entertaining and easy to follow music video. I am considering creating an indie style genre music video. I also think that it will be easy to apply the codes and conventions of an indie genre and make it look as realistic as possible. For example, using low budget settings such as a field would create an open and intriguing environment which would fit into the indie genre as indie artists are usually portrayed as vulnerable and unique.