A2 music video research and analysis

2. TYPES OF MUSIC VIDEO
Performance based
Narrative based
Conceptual

3. PERFORMANCE BASED
These videos show only the band/artist performing the song.
 Cheapest & easiest type of music video to make, providing a suitable
location is found.
 A large variety of shots need to be used in quick succession in order to
keep the video interesting, otherwise there is a risk of it being boring
with only one performance.
 These videos are effective for unknown artists establishing themselves,
as lots of close-ups can be used of the artist to help build their image.
An example would be Passenger’s video for ‘Let Her Go’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBumgq5yVrA

4. NARRATIVE BASED
Contains mostly footage that shows a storyline that runs throughout, or
sometimes several storylines running parallel to each other.
 With actors or sometimes the artists themselves.
 Story will either link to the lyrics of the song or just the overall theme.
 If the song is a soundtrack for a film then it will often show clips of film
footage cut into the music video, which is another platform for
promoting the movie.
An example of this would be Kanye West’s full length video for Runaway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7W0DMAx8FY
It follows a story of a bird woman who falls from the sky and introduction to
and view on our world, then her return to the skies. Kanye plays the
lead role of himself, and it includes dancers as well as actors.

5. CONCEPTUAL BASED
Based around a single concept or idea, this type of video is a lot harder to
film and fairly unusual. They are mostly constructed using Special FX,
and therefore are not only harder to do but more expensive, these
factors contribute to the fact they’re unusual.
These types of videos aren’t very popular in the mainstream because
they’re not very easy to relate to. So therefore for this reason very few
videos are purely conceptual.
An example of this is Drake’s video for ‘Take Care ft. Rihanna’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzP29emgpg