Music videos often tell a story or narrative that relates to the song's lyrics. This helps viewers connect the visuals and audio, making the song more memorable. Narrative music videos engage audiences like short films and can increase views when collaborating with films. Examples include Ariana Grande's video using scenes from The Mortal Instruments. Effective music videos also feature the artist, well-edited visuals synchronized to the music, and convey the song's genre or theme. While narrative videos dominate, performance and conceptual styles also communicate songs through artist portrayal or abstract concepts.

1. By Bailee Brooks

2.  Music videos often tend to have a type of
narrative that relates to the lyrics and type of
genre of the track.This creates a image/audio
relation as viewers are able to connect the
related items to each other are more likely to
remember the song.
 These types of music videos often tell some
type of story within them which causes
audiences engagement as they can often be
labelled as ‘short films’
 This is also a reason why films and music
artists will collaborate in an act of synergy so
the film is interpreted into the music video and
the song into the film generating larger
amounts of views.
 An example of this can be seen through the
music video ‘Almost is never enough:Ariana
Grande ft Nathan Sykes’ which involves
screenplay from the film ‘The Mortal
Instruments:City of Bones’

3.  Conventions of a narrative based music video according to the theorist Alex Goodwin include that
of:
 1. A thought through beat-
 This allows the song to be created and tends to set the genre of the track
 2. Relationship between the song and visuals
 With a clear link between the music and the theme shown it allows audience identify what the
music video will feature
 3. Narrative and performance of the song
 Narrative and performance will help to portray the song in the ideal way, this may often vary
depending on genre as a music video may not always include a clear narrative.
 4.Technical aspect of music video
 Editing must be concise and stick to the pattern of the music video, conventions will also be used.
for example within a pop song may use more jump cuts than that of a slow dancing song.
 5. Star image and camera shots to put attention on them
 With using a star image it allows audiences to focus on them and make a clear link between the
song and the creator/main star.This is more likely to stay in an audience members memory.
 This theory can be seen in many, if not all music videos. Despite this focusing on mainly narrative
based videos it can also be applicable to concept/performance themes as they will more than
often include these concepts within them.This generates a strong sense of a validity for this
theory as it is hard to suggest a music video that does not include at least one of these aspects.

4.  Performance based music videos
tend to consist of the music artist
performing their song in a way
which will appeal to their target
audience.This is usually seen in
more pop based songs, for
example ‘One direction’ with
their song ‘That’s what makes
you beautiful’
 These types of music videos tend
to focus heavily on technical
aspects such as high key lighting
and low angle camera shots to
emphasise focus on the artist and
make them seem as important as
possible.
 Performance based music videos
also tend to include narrative
based elements in order to keep
audiences engaged.
This can also be varied via genre of the music
video for example a more ‘urban’ type music
video would feature conventions such as
guns, money, violent actors, and women
whilst the artist performs their song. In
contrast, a pop artist who is more likely to
feature happy upbeat characters with more
joyful dancing.

5. Music videos with a ‘concept based’ theme
often tend to lean towards the more artistic
side with themes being more abstract and
unique. An example of this is shown through
the music video created for the song ‘Robin
Thicke: Blurred lines’ which features naked
women dancing obscurely, stuffed/real
animals, other random props and #Thicke
across the screen.
This created a large amount of discussion
within society when it was first released as the
music video was so transcendent and many
even claimed it was promoting rape culture.
Videos with a concept based theme give
creators more freedom with what they chose
and allows them to promote ideologies
through an art form, engaging audiences who
search for niche videos.

6.  Conventions of a concept based music video
include:
 Camera angles- These will often change and alter
through out the music video, this is so the audience
can see the type of concept the video is portraying
and not disengage with what is being shown.
 Mise en scene- This will often involve scenery and
costumes that tear away from ‘the norms’ of
society, for example in ‘Somebody that I used to
know: Gotye’ both characters are surrounded by
paint and have a lack of clothing.
 Editing- More than often editing within a concept
based music video will have periods of slow and
fast paces in order to communicate different
aspects of the theme to the audiences.This allows
audiences to feel differently through out the music
video and engage fully.
 Camera movements- Movements of the camera
may be included in a concept based music video in
order to give a unique feel to the video.

7.  From the information I have gathered I can
infer that a ‘Narrative based’ music video
seems to be the most popular through the
musical industry. Despite this there has also
been a rise in narrative based music videos
combining with that of performance based,
in order to promote the star as well as keep
the audiences involved with the video.