KISS and AC/DC are some big names in the 'in-concert' stlye - AC/DC's Highway to hell is an example of this.
AC/DC don't really have videos directed and produced for them like a lot of modern bands and artists will today. Gun's N' Roses used to be the same but have had a little play with more narrative driven videos.
Speaking of Narrative and Interpretive. There are also videos that will create a story from the lyrics and feel of the song and put those into a video.
Gun's N' Roses' November Rain is a pretty long song in itself, but it interprets the lyrics and also has some elements of performance. A better example of this technique would be Tenacious D, their song Beelzeboss - The video for this song actually comes from their film "The Pick of Destiny" but it became the actual music video for the song. The song itself has a narrative structure and fits very well with their bands' style.
Moving on to a more surreal part of music videos. The Prodigy have some pretty scary ones. Breathe was actually voted the scariest music video at one point, and I'm sure they're not wrong. The video has very little relation to the lyrics of the song and is just sort of a mish-mash of absurd scenes and the singer of Prodigy doing weird things.
There's also music videos that are a little more emotional and capture the tone and feel of the song rather than directly create a story from the lyrics.
James Blunt's You're Beautiful is a song that follows this style.
We're not done yet! Intertextual music videos were a pretty big hit last year. In this style, we have many sub-styles. Synergy is when songs that were used in films will often promote their song more by using footage from the actual film.
Let It Go was performed by Idina Menzel and was used in the film Frozen. The music video for this song is all footage from the film and a classic example of synergy.
Allusion is a small cultural reference, this includes referencing to another media text, a person, historical event or just an event. It's a little nod to the real world and there are plenty of songs that do this in their lyrics.
Pastiche, Parody and Homage are all 'little nods' to music videos, Parody is more, "Nice song, I'm going to mix it with a pop culture reference and make it funnier" Weird Al is particularly good at these and its how he stared his career.
Eat it, is a parody of Michael Jackson's Beat It
Homage is more of a way of showing appreciation for someone's work and saying thank you.
Ah, Animation! Gorillaz are an entirely animated band and their song, Clint Eastwood is the example I shall use for animation.
There are also music video which contain a small amount of animation; for example, Frank Turner's Recovery contains some funky animations, but I'll use that video for another style.
Lip-Sync is something that's in most music video (some artists do it live too ;) ) and it's a great way of showing who you are and promoting your image. Lip-Sync shows that it is you singing and what you sound like, it gives you more of a connection to the audience.
Most Adele music videos contain Lip-Syncing so take a look at one of those.
Cutting to the beat is ESSENTIAL in a music video, cutting out of time and/or in weird places can be very jarring and really take someone out of the tone of the video.
The music video for The Black Keys' Gold On The Ceiling has great editing and the Schemes Gag Reel, although not being a music video, still follows that convention and is good at it.
Graffiti6's Stare into the Sun uses fantastic post production effects. Post production effects are used to attract a slightly different audience if the effects are interesting, mesmerising or comples.
Going back to Frank Turner, split screen music videos are a little bit weird in that filming something 3 times and then having a third of the screen for each recording. But it's cool none the less. In this video, he uses split screen effects and some elements of animation.
This video also happens to use elements of chroma keying.
Camera movements are more common in the narrative music or music videos that use only one shot. The OK Go videos are perfect for this topic as most of their videos are outstanding and use a lot of camera movement, whether it's a drone of a fig-rig.
This video's camera movement is so precise and if it wasn't the videos would not be effective at all. This is also an example of angles and shot types, it's all one shot but the Mise-en-scene is absolutely stunning.
A little bit more about mise-en-scene, it is absolutely crucial in music videos to really get the audience in the correct mindset for the video.
R.E.M's It's The End Of The World, is a very good video that uses mise-en-scene to it's advantage.
The song is obviously about the end of the world and you can clearly see that from the images below.
This is a picture of an abandoned house, quite clearly has been ravaged, and it's fits with the song.
This is a picture of a teenager looking around the house picking up and looking at the items splayed around.
Another picture of the destruction in the house.
No comments:
Post a Comment