FORM AND STRUCTURE OF A MUSIC VIDEO

Within the pop genre as a whole, we see the narrative form of a music video extremely
often. This is when the music video shows the audience a short film, more often than not
relating to the lyrics. Within narrative music videos, they either amplify, disjuncture or
illustrate the lyrics.

Halseys music promo for her song Now Or Never has a narrative concept that amplifies the
meaning of the song. The lyrics describe a love that is going to have to end soon and so the
couple has to make the most of their time; within the video they show a fight between two
groups that separate these lovers and results in outrage, arguments and ultimately death.
This is due to the song being part of the Hopeless Fountain Kingdom album, which is based
off the story of Romeo and Juliet, and so Halsey has chosen to amplify the meaning of this
song in this video to demonstrate to her audience how severe the relationship and the story
is. It may have also been amplified as it was the first music video released for her album and
so it revealed to her pre-existing audience the story of this new album.

Stay by Zedd and Alessia Cara is a narrative video and illustrates the meaning of the song,
with some performance intercut between the narratives, a commonly used idea in pop. The
lyrics are talking about how all you had to do was stay whilst showing the audience the
progression of a relationship, until the end when one of the protagonists is hit by a car;
giving a literal meaning to all you had to do was stay a minute as if they had waited that
minute longer this wouldnt have happened. This demonstrates clearly to the audience how
staying together is a clear way of being safe.

Alessia Cara also uses illustrative narrative in her other music videos, such as Wild Things.
The song is about how people should live their lives fearlessly and to the fullest, whilst
showing a group of teenagers enjoying their freedom; messing about in carparks, having
parties and going on long trips- generally just making memories.

Nina Nesbitts Chewing Gum video uses an interesting narrative in order to amplify the
meaning of the song. The video uses a multi-strand narrative (following multiple characters
storylines), showing different people with their multiple relationships, edited to be sped up
and transition perfectly, to amplify the lyrics, which discuss how people are using each other
for sex and moving on as soon as theyre bored.

The other type of video that is extremely common within most genres is performance music
videos. This is when the audience is shown the artist performing, often with some narrative
intercut to make it more visually appealing overall. This form of music promo is very popular
within the pop-punk and rock genre.

We Dont Have To Dance By Andy Black is primarily the artist and his band performing,
intercut with scenes of what appears to be a bar and him watching a provocative film, but
still whilst singing. The conceptual shots are illustrative of his lyrics This is hell, yes, I am in
hell as the characters have highly distorted faces to give them an almost demonic face, but
also representative of the lyrics Im a hazard to myself through the scenes of the bar. The
performance is shown in high key lighting which allows the audience to see the artists
expressions clearly and allows us to understand the meaning of the song further. This could
be linked to Douglas Rushkoffs theory that Most rock videos do not aspire to tell stories
with beginnings, middles and ends, but instead impart meaning through visual collage,
meaning that they rely mainly on performance, with non-narrative conceptual shots to
highlight meaning.

Different genres of music have conventions that specifically link to their music videos; for
example rap and RnB videos are predominantly dominated by the sexualisation of women
and some type of humour in order to attract the stereotypical heterosexual male audience
between the ages of 15 and 25. A prime example of a music video using both humour and
sexualisation is Do Re Mi by Blackbear. However, Charli XCX has contrasted these
conventions in her Boys video, in which we see male models placed in the stereotypical
provocative positions that women would often be put in for music videos; but it may have
been a failed concept as this dig at the way the media portrays media was hugely laughed at
as it was so new and atypical for us to see within the media that it was seen as almost
comedic.

Symbolic codes are used extremely often within music videos for indie and alternative
music. The band The 1975 relies heavily on them to show the meanings of their songs; the
video for Love Me is full of symbolism to represent the meaning of the son (how celebrities
are fake and overly obsessed with themselves. We see this first through the obnoxious
chewing of chewing gum by the band members to demonstrate how disrespectful they are,
then the audience is presented with a line-up of cardboard cut outs of celebrities before
they began to change their behaviour for popularity (such as Miley Cyrus) and most
importantly, in my opinion, the lead singer gets in the way of the other band members and
is trying to push them off of their instruments to demonstrate how celebrities try to steal
other peoples fame.

Indie and pop-punk artists use more poetic imagery to build on the emotions of the
audience with shocking images. This is seen in the video for Colours by Halsey, wherein we
see the relationship between a young couple only to discover that the girl in this
relationship is infatuated with the boys father. This shocking and bizarre imagery makes the
audience feel confused and shocked as we become so familiar with her and the young boys
relationship which we can tell is loving through the symbolism through the interactions that
they have with each other. This concept is also used in the video for Mad Hatter by Melanie
Martinez in which a girl is being followed and helped through life by some murderous toys.
However, whilst the whole video is full of disturbing imagery; Melanie Martinez as an artist
is known for dressing as a young child and using strange imagery in all of her music videos to
gain popularity and attract attention from her niche audience, as evidently many people do
not like the style of her videos as it can often be quite grotesque as well as disturbing.