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the different categories of music videos

Updated: Nov 22, 2021


there are three different types of music videos in the industry. Using this post I will be running through all the different types and styles and going through their conventions as well.


here are the following three:

  • Performance

  • narrative

  • concept

I will start off by talking about Performance videos...


Performance Videos

Artists that create a performance within their music video makes the audience focus solely on the performance. Genres such as alternative Rock and Pop Punk commonly include a performance to their music video. There are also a few artists who include a narrative in their music videos to demonstrate the meaning behind the lyrics and to make it more visually pleasing to watch. Furthermore a structure within a performance video plays a key part because it enables the music video to form a shape where it can develop and change during the course of a music video. This prevents the video from being visually unappealing and boring. The key structures that editors usually use are the different forms of editing (fast/slow paced, jump cuts, cross cutting etc..) The use of unconventional camera angles/shots and lastly the consistent or even contrasting colour scheme.


Advantages and Disadvantages:

An advantage of using performance within a music video is that it

enables a more realistic feel for the audience, it makes the

audience imagine as if they were there live listening to the bands

play. An example of this would be Moose Blood's "Swim Down",

the camera angles and lighting create a realistic feel in the music

video, another advantage is that they allow self-promotion

because as they are in the music video performing the realistic

performance aspect can temp the audience to buy future tour

tickets to sell them live.

Nevertheless, the disadvantage to this is that sometimes

performance videos can be slightly repetitive and boring, for

example, Ben Howard's "The Fear starts to quickly get boring and

uninteresting for the audience to watch because video is mainly

focused on him playing his guitar, another disadvantage that is

very popular for previous performance videos is that they can be

labeled as artists who lacks the sense of creativity into their

music.


example of performance music video...

narrative music video

A narrative video is where the music video

has been created into a short film rather

than a music video, sometimes narrative

music videos will not have lip-synching

singing but it will often relate to the lyrics in

some kind of way. There are three different

types of narratives within the narrative

genre, these are: Illustration, amplification

and disjuncture.

An advantage of using narrative music videos is that it

emphasizes the artists intentions of the song to be seen, it shows

the artist is interested in creating a short story for the audience,

another advantage is that the plot is very simple meaning the

audience can easily understand and follow the narrative, this

helps to engage the audience more rather them not paying

attention to the music video and just listening to the song.

The common disadvantages that narrative music videos have are

that they are usually expensive for record labels to produce

because it uses a lot of resources such as: equipment, use of

editing software and various types of locations to film at. Another

disadvantage is that if the narrative is too in-depth in can be

confusing for the audience to follow, and the message within the

narrative can be commonly misunderstood.

The combination of Performance and Narrative

is a very common form of music because bands

would usually appear as part of the narrative or

as an observer.

A prime example of this form of music video is

The All American Reject's "Gives you hell" the

combination of their performance and the

narrative engages the audience more, but

mainly the fans of the artist, this is because the

narrative involves all of the band members

which makes it more appealing to fans as they

are the ones who more interested in the

Individual band members.

Example of narrative music videos...


Concept music videos

A concept video is very different from Performance and Narrative

videos, this is due to the fact that concept videos are have no storyline

and usually does not relate to the lyrics. However, in most concept

music videos there is either some sort of small performance or narrative

so that the audience can somewhat understand the music video without

being too confused. Concept videos is merely based on the artists ideas,

it expands their creativity within the song. As a result of creative concept

videos, audience often remember these types of music videos because

of its uniqueness. There are usually two types of concept music videos,

these are: Thematic and symbolic. Thematic videos are themed based

videos, so for example: If the music video was an old-folk country song.

there would be fields, and farms, etc... In a symbolic music video there

are a lot of signs within the music video that gradually build up the

meaning behind the video, the lighting and the pace of editing can also

symbolizes the emotions and meanings within the music video.


An advantage of concept videos is that they are

seen as very "artsy", they usually have more

creativity compared to Performance and Narrative

music videos. As a result, another advantage is that

concept videos are more memorable for the

audience meaning these types of music videos are

quite popular for a long time.

However, there are also disadvantages to these

videos because due to its "uniqueness", concept

videos can sometimes be misunderstood and

mislead to the audience as it can come across as

"random and strange." Another disadvantage is

that in a promotional scheme view, if the artist is

not seen in the concept video then they could potential be at risk for not promoting their identity.

example...



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