Key Terms and Concepts for a Music Video

Music videos are almost the polar opposite to the Thriller films we created last year at AS level. This time it is about extending the song into a visual concept rather, to give the audience a new and fresh outlook of the song. We will be honing the skills we gained last year, such as the exploration of genre and how to reach a select target audience. During this weeks lesson we have been our visual interpretation of songs for music videos by shutting off everything but the song and writing down what comes to mind.

Key Terms 


Most music videos are a mixture of these -

• Conceptual - A type of music video that is a metaphor of the song and may not necessarily make sense when taken at face value.

• Narrative - A type of music video that tells us a story. The stereotype of this is 'Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They have an argument/things break down. They make-up at the end, happy ever after'.

• Performance - This type of music video is of the band/artist actually performing the song.

• Hyper reality - This is an integral part of music videos as if you were to shoot one like a film, in the style of realism, then you would have a very boring two minutes. As with the Chemical Brothers video for Hey boy, Hey Girl, what is more interesting, a club full of people dancing or a club full of skeletons? Exactly. When watching a music video the audience wants to whisked away from their mundane reality. -
  
  Intertexuality - This is where music videos make reference to... well anything. Usually they reference famous films but they can also reference books, TV Shows, other music videos, magazines/comics, and the list goes on - MUSE - KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA VIDEO - The Most Intertexual video ever!