Music Video Theory Analysis

1. THEORY
Relationship between lyrics/music/visuals
- It is the connection between the lyrics and the visual to convey the message to the
target audience and promote the music video efficiently.
For example THE 1975 music video for their track THE ROBBERS. It was clearly shown on
the visuals what was the song was about and they literally robbed a store which was
relevant for the song title.
Genre expectations
- Genre helps the producers to create a music video that will hit their target market. It
make the music video more creative and suitable for the artist.
Just like All time low’s music video for Dear Maria, their genre was rock so their music video
was feautirng them performing. Categorizing their genre makes the mise en scene more
easy to set up and put together.

2. Audience Expectations
- The target market has expectations with the certain artist as they are categorizing
using the genre as well. With this, the producer will know how they will sell to the
market and how could they break and follow media conventions.
What semeotic techniques have been used to generte meaning?
- It help to enhance the narrative story of the music video and the meaning of the song
to the audiences. It creates imagery and effect on the readers mind. It could also
developed the concept and the genre of the artist.
The use of the gun in the music video THE ROBBERS made the song title relevant and also
enhanced the song lyrics connoting that the song is about hurting each other and robbing
each other's innocence and happiness with the gesture pointing the gun to the woman.
Identify and describe the meanings generated
- Some of the music videos are symbolic and straightforward sometimes you have to
look further to know the true meaning of the song and analyse the song lyrics and the
visuals. Like on the music videos robbers, it wasn’t really about just robbing things
but also robbing their happiness and sanity.
Narrative

3. - Narrative music videos are those that have storyline and relevant to the song. It
usually adds more concept and add more meaning to the song.
On the 1975 The robbers music video, it is a narrative video that tackle being madly inlove
that it consumes your sanity and do bad things for the person that you love.
Editing
- Editing is the one that adds flavour to the video. The colour grading, transitions and
camera movement was the one that made the video more relevant and connotes
emotions to the song.
Just like on Bruno Mars’ treasure MV, he has the concept of the retro music videos so the
quality and the video size were manipulated as well to match the costume and the song
rhythm.
Camera movement and Framing

4. - This also help to conduct the emotion and the meaning of the song. It also convey
the main focus of the video and what emotion they wanted to implement to the
audiences through the music video.
The music video of Sam Smith for Too good at goodbyes shows how the camera movement
and framing affect the song meaning and the framing. As we can see, since Sam Smith was
in the center of the camera frame and not the one who’s playing the piano, it means that he
is the star of the music video. Also, the movement of the camera here was slow zooming out
which was just right for the type of song that he was singing.