Styles and conventions of music Videos

The theorist Simon Frith, believed that that there are a variety of different styles of music videos. the three main ones he believed to be the most used are performance, narrative and Conceptual. However, as the years have passed new theorists have developed this idea and added more styles of music videos such as interpretative, animation and surreal. 

Performance: 

performance is the  recording of a real life performance of a band or an artist for example Taylor Swift with her song mean, where she performs a musical. In this particular video it makes the audience feel as if taylor swifts concerts are entertaining and exiting and would want to go them. This therefore benefits Taylor Swift because she would be making profits from her concerts. It also help her portray her feelings and thought through the images such as costumes, themes and locations shown in the video.  This type of styles are usually used in metal music, punk music or country music. 

Narrative: 

Narrative is the  process in which a music tells a story according to the lyrics of the song. It must contain a beginning, middle and end  and can sometimes be seen as a short film. For example Katy Perry's, last friday night.  It tells the story of Kathy Beth Terry having a hang over of her friday party. The lyrics match the images in the video. It makes the audience watch the whole music video just to see what happened at the end of the music video. This allows Katy Perry to make interesting music videos that would leave the viewers intrigued and engaged to see the ending. Some videos like Dilemma by Nelly and Kelly Rowland contain a cliff hanger to make their views watch their next music video to see if it is going to be continued or not. This used to be popular in the 1980s however, it's still used today.

Conceptual:

Conceptual music videos are not based on a performance or a narrative, instead it focusses on making the music video interesting by using visuals that are appropriate to the tempo of the song. In order for the images in the music video to be conceptual the images can sometimes be shocking, emotional, humorous, can display the idea of a particular director or can be closely linked to the themes of the artist or the band. Looking at the example of sia she always has the same little girl dancing ballet in her videos. She does this to keep her videos consistant and to amuse her viewers with an exotic dancing that takes a lot of skill and courage to master.

Interpretative:

An interpretative music videos when the lyrics of the song match the images shown on the the screened music video, sometimes not directly. This is done so that each person can interpret their own message from the song or the video. In jibbs video, Chains Hand Low. We can see the singers have long chains, But what exactly are they trying to portray with the music video and lyrics. Well it makes the audience think that they are rich and can the audience who come from a background like theirs can relate and would admire them as they have the same background and they are successful and they would want to be like them. Everyone interprets the video the same way.  

Animation:

Animation based music videos are usually hand drawn or computer generated images. Contrasting Performance, this music video type does not contain any real humans. the music video shot me down displayed beside shows a music video based soley on computer based animation, which some hoe looks like a comic. In my opinion this has been done to catch the audience's attention through the images that are not seen in all music videos. This would allow the audience to connect with the music video through the flashing images and allow them to create a story of their own, also having what is seen as a comic music video allows audience to seek their videos more to the continuation of the previous comic.Within animation options are limitless and allows artist

Surreal:

A surreal type of music video may sometimes have no narrative, or message and can be abstract as it has no relation to the lyrics. For example Afterglow by Wilkinson hs a variety of different images and statistics depending on the image shown. Why is this done, it catches the audience's eye by making something they have not usually seen before. It makes the artist stand out and allows the audience to think that some of the images and statistic are relating to the artists life style. It is an indirect of showing what the artists interests might be or showing a contrasting video to the lyrics so audience might find that there is two different messages behind the music video and the lyrics of the song.

Cameo:

Cameo is what we call featuring. Camero is when two artist join forces to create a music video. Taking the example of Chris Brown and Tyga with their Ayo video. They have similar target audiences however, some might not know that Tyga exists so it's like Chris Brown introducing Tyga to his fans. It's a collaboration between both artists to increase their sales. Audiences are interested in this because they get to know new artists, and explore different types of music genres like hip-hop, rap and many others.

Pastiche:

The recording of an existing song being interpreted into different vocals by a different artists. The song impossible originally sang by Shontelle was interpreted into a new voice when James Arthur won the Xfactor by singing this song. I think artists do this to get audiences that like the son already and are interested in a different type of music genre and prefer to hear it one way rather than just through one. What im saying is that audiences like to expand their taste in music and are willing to try listening to new types of music. It benefits the audience as they might get tired of listening to the same thing over and over again.