Music Video

The Music industry:

Performance:

• Lip synch,
• live performance,
• choreographed / free style dance,
• playing instrument.

Narrative:

• storyline
• theme
• motifs;
• linear
• non-linear.

Conceptual:

• abstract set of motifs that may have no obvious link to the lyric.
• A conventional performance / narrative style video
• A conceptual post-modern style video.

Things to analyse ( form and convention):

• Camera: angles, shot size, camera movement, framing
• Editing: cutting rate/ rhythm (to the rhythm / beat?), types of cut (matched, jump, cutaways), transitions, effects (including Special Effects SFX)
• Mise en scene: costume, make up, props, location, lighting

• Lip synch and authorage /  star quality, which links to…
• Representation: of the star, sexuality, gender, ethnicity / culture, subculture and genre, personality, celebrity and consumerism
• Audience: and how the video “positions” them; the male gaze; voyeurism.

Jorja Smith- The one:

• Repeated
• Love/Heartbeat, "the one"
• Performance and
  narrative
• Lip sync, woven into the narrative-naturalistic
• Non-Linear, loose narrative theme

Beyonce- Formation:

• Performance & Conceptual. 
• Culture, ethnic identity. 
• New Orleans- Mardi Gras
• Floods
• Martin Luther King
• Afro- Daughter
• Gender: Female dancers- Authorage
• Feminist: Objectified/ Male Gaze

Postmodernism:

By nature hard to define, but might include:

• A mix and match aesthetic, taking influences from a range of genres
• “Look” is as important / more important than “meaning”
• Blurring of time, space
• Unconventional, highly non-linear narrativemart
• Mixing up types of narration, for example first and third, which might lead to…
• Breaking the fourth wall
• Intertextuality: when there are deliberate references made to other media products, and the music video is only understood if this reference is understood by the audience.
• Mixing fantasy and reality (simulacra- Baudrillard)

Conventions:

• A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, which illustrate, reinforce or contradict the lyrics.
•  Thought beats: seeing the sounds (the relationship between the music and the visuals, which illustrate, amplify or contradict the music.)
• Genre-related style and iconography present.
• Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist: the creation of a star image to promote a recognizable brand image.
• Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.

Relation of visuals to song.

• Treatment of authority

• Love and sex

• Growing up / loss of innocence

• Political / social consciousness

• Reality v fantasy (and blurring)