BY KAMAL AND GEORGE

Our own Theory Of Music Videos

Intro

Over the vast amount of time we have taken when completing our research and planning, we have both watched countless music videos that we have analysed, discussed and also taken and developed ideas from. We have noticed things like patterns that happen across the majority of the music videos that we have made into our guidelines for a typical music video.

First Guideline – Main Artist Focus

The first of our guidelines for music videos is specifically what the camera focuses on. Normally in typical videos the main shots of the video would be focussed specifically on the artists that have created the song and they would be the ‘star’ of the video. This has specific links to both Dyer’s Star Theory and also Carlsson’s theory of the commercial exhibitionist. This is because the artist would be perceived as a person that people aspire to be like and this is shown through things like high key lighting making the artist look as best as they can. In our project we will be following this as the narrative will be focusing on the ‘lead singer’s’ perspective of the story.

Second Guideline

Another thing that we noticed throughout a few music videos was that the main artist in the video would be performing within the video. This is normally them either playing an instrument or singing but can also be in the form of dancing as well. We have also noticed that more recently music videos would have a separate story line and mix it in with the artist performing. This can be seen in songs such as Rockabye – Clean Bandit, Sean Paul, Anne-Marie, and also in Say You Won’t Let Go – James Arthur. In our video we will be having the main ‘lead singer’ performing by singing in the video.

Images taken from Superheroes – The Script

Third Guideline – Sexuality and Relationships – Male Gaze

We have found that, more specifically in videos made by females, that there is a lot of sexual representation in music videos. Videos normally try to show relationships between 2 heterosexual characters but instead of showing in more of a classical romanticised way, it is shown in a more sexual way. Females are normally shown to be wearing quite revealing clothing thus submitting to theories such as the male gaze, in order to try and reach out to a variety of audiences, when concerning gender. An example of this could be with Nicki Minaj in High School. An example of a relationship video could be with Closer by the Chainsmokers (lyrical music video). In our video we will following part of this guideline as we will be including themes of heterosexual relationships but it won’t be presented in a sexual manner.

Images taken from Closer and High School by The Chainsmokers and Nicki Minaj