Music Video TheoryConventions of Music Videos

Music Video Examples

Justin Bieber – Confident (Narrative)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKu0ZlioiB8 This is a song with a narrative element Eminem – Rap God (Performance and also

Conceptual)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGs_qK2PQA Song with performance element A-ha – Take On Mehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914 Conceptual Music Video

Narrative Music Video Justin Bieber – “Confident”

The protagonist has seen a girl that he likes going into a petrol station so he has gone to try speak to her.

He has now trying to interact with the girl that he likes by trying to talk and flirt with her. She then leaves after he talks to her but she then gets on her bike and rides off, the protagonist tires to chase her but cant. He then manages to find

her at a party and then surprises her but going up behind her then kissing her.

A narrative music video is a video that tells a story. People can relate to these sort of music videos most of the time. The lyrics usually match the video so this allows people to pick out the narrative strand.

Performance Music VideoEminem – Rap God

Performance based music videos are used to try and promote the artist/duo/group to the public. It can be used in a positive way as they want to give a good image of the artist by making him the central focus of the video. Some artist want to create a performance based video as its cheaper than any other type of video. There is a theorist called Dyer. He states that the stars image isn't the real person they portray to be, they use it to appeal to a target audience.

Conceptual Music VideoA-ha – Take On Me

Conceptual music videos are used to give messages over to the audience but these messages sometimes may be difficult to find as they can become blurred in the music video. When it isn’t difficult to find the messages is usually really easy to spot. In the video the women has fallen in love with the comic book hero and then he grabs her into the comic book life, which represents a relationship that is going to start. She then has to exit the comic book world as a pair of men are trying to split them up, this represents people are always trying to get involved with out peoples relationship.

Influence

There was two types of conventions that we wanted to put into our video, and they were conceptual and narrative. The reason to why we chose these two is because we wanted to tell a story to our audience but also wanted the audience to get a message which was never give up. Both A-ha and Justin Bieber’s music videos influenced us as these videos give the audience something that they can relate to which is what we want to do. I feel like the Eminem video was not very inspirational as even though it had a small story behind it, I didn't’t feel like I gain anything from watching it as it’s all nearly a performance music video.