Music videos use a rage of styles and techniques and in this blog I will be going through them and showing some examples of how they are being used.
The first style am going to be talking about is animation; animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. An example of animation in a music video is this
(animation definition )
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=vss&defl=en&q=define:animation&sa=X&ei=ngvdTI6jDJOxhQeRx5DADQ&ved=0CBkQkAE
This video is a great example of an animation music video as from the start to end its animation. It is a very dynamic video as it had energy and there was always something going on. I think they used animation for this video because they could do things that they couldn’t do in real life as they were able to manipulate the whole city and recreate it as they liked. It’s also a way to make an amazing video without having to spend a hug budget as everything is computer generated. It also has another style which is narrative; it’s a story that is created in a constructive format with in this video they used animation. This is a good example of narrative as you see the story progresses along with the song it also followed the song and showed you visual adaptations of what the song was saying. the fact that they showed visual representation of certain word is good as if someone hears the song alone and they have seen the video when they hear some of the lyrics they will remember the video.
The other style that is used in videos is in concert or as live. this is where a band appears or is to be preforming on stage.A good example of a video which was done in concert is this
this is a good example of a in concert video as the video was done when the artist was preforming live in two venues in two days and they just cut between them and all the lighting was from stage lighting ; you can some times see that the artist goes dark goes because there is a lack of lights on him. I feel this is a great style to use for this song as its a lively and a jumpy track and the fact you saw real peoples reaction to it gives it more energy. they use a technique with in this video which makes it feel more like a music video and that is cutting to the beat. the fact it was beat edited makes it dynamic its a very exiting video. its also a great way to promote that the artist is a good showmen as people that see this video may want to experiences the energy for themselves.
The next style I will be talking about is impressionist, this is a style which sets a mood or a sense of something. its not narrative and is more experimental. bellow is an example which does this
this video sets a mood of sadness and emptiness, this is done by how they have set up big locations which is bare apart from the singers and the dancers. the way that the singers are dressed sets the mood as well because its bland. they use digital effect to create a mood as they desecrated the colour from the video and made it look dark and it makes the mood of sadness more apparent.they also used camera angels to make this video impressionist. when it came to close ups as theyshowed the distress on the singers face; so you saw a lot of close ups but in different angels but most of the angels were from above to make the singers look dominative compared to the location which is quite big. A technique which is used through out the whole video is miming.this is used effective as this makes you feel like the artist is singing to the audience.
this section is all about pastiches. pastiches is when an artists video looks at another style like 80s disco time or period drama . an example of this is a video by snoop dogg sensual seduction
this was a pastiches of the 80s disco years, you can see because the video features Snoop in retro eighties outfits holding a keytar while using a talkbox, this video had also had a direct homage to Prince's "When Doves Cry" video as you see snoop in the same set up and using the same effect of a mirrors screen. I think he did homage to prince as he was an icon of that time. They enhanced the look of the 80s by using chroma key;chroma key is when a video is shot against a green or blue screen to allow the background to be edited on post production. This was done purposely bad to take the piss out and to make apparent that this style is form the 80s. They used very bad camera movements like shaky cameras and crash zooms to make it look bad.
A styles sometimes can depend on the genre of the music.For every type/genre of music there is a different style of video.An example of a genre is hip hop
If you have a look at the video above you can see that this has the typical conventions of a hip hop video which are ;Girls, Money, Cars, Big Houses, Alcohol, Bling and performance based . the girls are also very scantily dressed. The video has a verse/chorus structure to it and uses a lot of common motifs such as tattoos on the rappers.the reason why hip hop has these conventions is because its a male dominated genre which is aiming to attract the male viewers rather then women. in contrast if you have a look at a R&B video which is below you can see a difference
R 'n' B videos are quite glamorised and narration based. the thing that makes the two genres different is that in hip hop it sexualises all the women on it and in R&B videos its different it makes a single women the main character and makes her accentual to the artist in the story.
