The document discusses three main genres of music videos: narrative, concept, and performance. Narrative music videos tell a story throughout the video, often about relationships, while concept videos use abstract themes and visuals to engage audiences. Performance videos focus on showing the artist performing. Each genre has strengths like engaging audiences or promoting the artist, but also limitations, such as concept videos sometimes being too obscure or narratives following predictable storylines. The document provides examples to illustrate the different genres.

2.  Narrative music videos revolve around a story being told
throughout the entirety of the video.
 Most Narrative music videos usually explore relationships.
 The narratives are also very Todorovian.
 According to Carol Vernallis’ theory, the story will often be
resolved but this, however, is not always the case.
 Artists create narrative driven music videos because it appeals to
mainstreamers (according to Young and Rubican’s Four C’s) and
a younger target audience.

3.  This music videos shows a story about a man attempting to
gain a woman’s attention in a diner/cafe, a simple and
compelling narrative that holds the audience’s attention
throughout the entirety of the video.
 Like many narrative music videos the story is based on the
dynamics of relationships. I believe narrative music videos
use this typical story line heavily based on relationships
because it is a universal theme. This means that many
audiences will relate and understand the storyline and
therefore enjoy. Hence the video will become successful.
 This is a very Todorovian approach to narrative and it
heavily bases the creation of music videos on the
assumption that their audience will be ‘mainstreamers’,
according to Young and Rubicam’s 4 Cs and therefore
enjoy simple and easily solved narratives.

4.  Concept music videos often include abstract themes and visuals
 They are compelling, innovative and creative.
 This genre of music videos are usually based around a single idea or
‘concept’ and are normally obscure or unusual. This unusualness is
an attraction to many audiences and it draws them in to watch the
video.
 A successful concept music video should keep the audience
entertained and even sometimes confused throughout the videos
entirety. It should hold their attention constantly.
 It is not unusual for concept videos to go viral on the internet because
of their unusualness. An example of this is OKGo’s – ‘Here it goes
again’ which has over 32 million views on YouTube.

5.  This music video is based on presenting images using everyday
objects, focussing on a bed, and the stop motion film technique
which creates pictures that makes the audience think about what
they are seeing.
 It is a really interesting video to watch and keeps the audience
engaged, which is the main selling point of concept videos and
the reason for their huge success among many different
audiences.
 This video has over 30 million views on YouTube showing again
how concept videos regularly go internet viral because of their
compelling visuals.
 Arguably, each concept music video has a unique selling point
and this videos unique selling point is the use of stop motion
film work which is rarely seen in popular music videos.

6.  Performance music videos are about the actual performance of a song which the
band/artist play live for the video or lip sync to a pre-recorded track.
 This type of video focuses on the band or artist and the audience’s attention is all
on them rather than being on interesting visuals.
 Bands that are quirky or interesting often use this genre of music video to
promote that quirkiness and showcase it as a unique selling point to the
audience. It is also a way of them showing their appearance and promoting
themselves.
 It is common for punk, alternative and rock artists to use mainly performance in
their music videos.
 Performance videos leave a lot of room for becoming hybrids. So more often than
not a band or artist will create a performance-narrative hybrid or performance-
concept hybrid because they are generally more interesting for audiences.
 Although performance is a music video genre itself, many bands or artist choose
to include short clips of them performing into other music video types.

7.  This is a very typical example of a performance music
video as the entirety is compiled of clips of the band
performing.
 It uses attention-grabbing lighting, camera movements
and fast paced editing to draw the audience’s notice
and to make it more interesting than it would be
without all these techniques being used.
 This is punk/rock band which shows how a common
convention of performance music videos is that these
genre of artists tend to use the genre more for their
videos.

8. Concept Performance Narrative
Creative Promotes the band/artist and
their look
Satisfies audiences
Engages audiences Focuses more on the music and
lyrics rather than visuals.
Keeps audiences watching as
they want to see the conclusion
Are visually appealing and
draws attention of all audiences
Allows for genre hybrids and
therefore more creativity
Story often coincides with lyrics
(Andrew Goodwin) and therefore
emphasises them
Can often go viral because of
their unusualness

9. Concept Performance Narrative
Many audiences often do not
‘understand’ their purpose
Often they can’t have just images
of the band performing alone as
it disengages audiences.
Are often Todorovian and
predictable
Sometimes can become too
obscure
Have to have hybrids of this
genre because of the simple-ness
of the genre on its own.
Follow similar universal themes
(relationships and love)
Can be expensive to create
because they are so abstract
Often leave enigma codes
unanswered because of the short
time allotted to telling a story