Music videos serve several purposes: to promote a song and album sales, to engage audiences visually with the artist's music, and to showcase the artist's talents. A good music video keeps the audience engaged through fast editing, varied shots, and visual representations of the song's lyrics, chorus, and themes. It uses elements like lighting, costumes, props, and genre-specific conventions to both tell a short story and meet audience expectations for that style of music. The primary goal of a music video remains marketing and promotion of the artist and their music.

1. FUNCTION AND ANALYSIS OF
MUSIC VIDEO
Aneeka Peart

2. FUNCTION OF A MUSIC VIDEO
A music video is a short film integrating a song and imaginary,
produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music
videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device
intended to promote the sale of music recordings. In my own
words I believe that a music video is a visual pleasure for the
audience to engage with the artist, whilst the video promotes the
song and albums. A music video also gets the audience to view
the lyrics and purpose of the song in a different aspect, whilst a
music video does all these things it also promotes the artist’s
talents e.g. dancing or playing an instrument.

3. AUDIENCE
The main reason audiences get visual pleasure from music videos is because it
is different to other forms of media for example movies, news and TV drama,
the reasons for this is because the editing of music videos are fast pace and
have various jump cuts keeping the audience alert and aware, there is a focus
usually on bright colours and non-diegetic sound as the artist is lip syncing
throughout.
Music videos give the audience a chance to see the artist display themselves
and perform the lyrics in a visual manner.
From these music video’s audiences gain expectations of the artist and the
genre as a whole whether that be Reggae or Pop.

4. WHAT MAKES A GOOD MUSIC
VIDEO
In a good music video it usually tells a story to the artist to accompany the
lyrics and mainly focuses on the artist. However there are many genre’s such as
R&B, Hip Hop, Soul, Indie rock, Pop, Classical, Dubstep, Deep house, Funky
house, Grime, Country, Drum and bass, Rock etc. and all of these genres
share some conventions but also have differences and therefore the audience
will have different expectations for different genre’s. For example rock you
would expect to see instrument’s, a stage scene or live performance and close
up’s of the band members and their instruments, whereas in Hip hop or R&B
you would expect to see women portrayed in the male gaze wearing tight
fitting clothing and they become submissive to the man an object to the male’s
in the video, you also notice close ups of the body so the body becomes
dismembered e.g. lips, legs eyes etc. this makes the body become an object.

5. MY IDEA OF A GOOD MUSIC
VIDEO
A good music video in my opinion should have a variety of shots throughout
the song to keep the audience engaged with the lyrics. I also think that using
different lightings to differentiate the chorus and versus visually to the
audience gives clarity and keeps the expectations met. They should also
consist of various costume changes and props to highlight the lyrics of the
song or the main chorus. In my overall opinion a music video should tell a
short visual story.