5) Lesson Task - Genre: Key features of Music Video

Use the following notes on this posting and the postings below to help you make notes and analyse your media production in preparation for a question on genre. 

• Key Features of a Music Video
• Textual Analysis of Music Videos (essential questions) 
• Music Video Research/Analysis

Key Features of Music Video

·      Music videos work around 3 codes – music, lyrics and iconography. The relationships between these codes is key to understanding how music videos work.

·      They are designed to provide pleasure in order to keep the viewer watching, and to encourage repeat viewings.

·      The starting point for analysis is to explore whether the video primarily performance-based, narrative-based or concept-based and how elements of each are used in it.

The following questions are worth asking of any Music Video:

Question:

Do the visuals illustrate, amplify or offer disjuncture with the lyrics?

Question:

Do the visuals illustrate, amplify or offer disjuncture with the music?

Key terms:

Illustration: not always literal

Amplification: new layers of meaning added to the song

Disjuncture: contradiction between lyrics and image.

Key area for discussion - Genre 
look for generic signifiers - dancing, gestures
Overall look, instruments, lyrics
Familiarity, recognition, pleasure for audience
Genre as a tool for music video analysis - how useful/limiting is it?
Compare to analysis of film - quite a different process.

Genre (analysis)

Music Video Research/Analysis

Watch a variety of music videos, and make notes using these questions:

1.     Does the song belong to a particular genre?

2.     Do the images illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics?

3.     Do the images illustrate, amplify or contradict the music?

4.     How are the performers shown?

5.     Does the video present a voyeuristic view of women?

6.     What other texts does the video refer to/ draw upon?

Summerise findings/compare and contrast/apply theory.

Considerations of genre, audience appeal, form and style underpin your notes.

Genre and your music video

Use the guidelines below to make preparation notes for a possible exam question on genre.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MUSIC VIDEOS – ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

1.     Institutional/reference information

·       Which video are you analysing, who is it by and, if you know, who directed it?

·       What genre does the music belong to and what broad characteristics of that genre does the video have?

2. What is the relationship between lyrics and visuals?

·       Work through the song and identify ways in which the lyrics are illustrated or amplified or even contradicted by the visuals.

·       Pick out some specific examples to back up your argument.

3.     What is the relationship between music and visuals?

·       Does the video cut to the beat?

·       Are solo instrumental bits illustrated by the video?

·       Does the video change pace with the music?

·       Give examples to support your points

4. Are there close-ups of the artist and star image motifs?

·       How is the record company looking to sell this track?

·       What image of the artist/band is being offered?

·       How does this video relate to previous videos by the artist?

·       Are there motifs, which have been used previously? Or does this video represent a change of image?

5. Is there reference to the notion of looking?

·       Do you get the sense that the artist is on sexual display or that other people in the video are used in this way?

·       Does camerawork, costume, dance or something else imply sexualised display?

·       Are there other references to ‘looking’ such as screens or binoculars, cameras, etc?

·       Give examples and consider why these features have been chosen.

6. Are there intertextual references?

·       Do these relate to other music video, to aspects of star’s image or to completely separate texts such as TV programmes or films?

·       How are they used?

7. Is the music video performance-based, narrative-based or concept-based?

·       How much of each?

Conventions of music videos

Conventions of music videos

All music videos have to represent certain codes and conventions. 
The 5 main music video codes and conventions are: 

1. Lyrics - They establish a general tone to the song, and address the storyline or subject matted. Key lines sometimes play a significant part in the visuals, but rarely would there be a full interpretation, and sometimes the lyrics do not directly correlate with the music video, it may just be the tone or mood of the lyrics which is conveyed in the music video
2. Music - The tempo of the track should drive the editing of a music video, fast paced music should mirrored with fast paced editing, and slow paced music should be accompanied with slow paced editing. furthermore particular sounds in a track may be foregrounded and emphasised on screen, for example if the video wasperformance based there would be a close up of the guitar or drums.
3. Genre - Each genre carries its own codes and conventions, a viewer would expect to see. This would be reflected in the mise-en-scène, the camera work and editing style. I have highlighted the different codes and conventions of music dependant on genre in a separate post.
4. Camerawork - How the camera is used and how images are sequenced has a significant impact on meaning. The angle, movements and shot distance would fluctuate depending on the music. Up beat tones are likely to require more dynamic camerawork.

5. Editing - In the process of filming the director and camera worker must film to edit. Some music videos would feature fast cut montages (sometimes containing of random images). This then encourages repeated viewings in case the viewer missed anything the first time. The editing helps to establish the mood, and is sometimes is used to fragment the narrative.
Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Therefore music video's will usually include the artists, to allow the viewers to identify with the artists and aspire to be like them.Therefore music videos have to be incredibly aesthetically appealing and captivating. Once an artists is established they can then use narrative music videos rather thanperformance based music videos, which is virtually a short film that corresponds in some way with the music, perhaps the tone, the actual lyrics or just the sound of the music. Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation , live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. 

Post-modern

Post-modern:
An aesthetic category, often applied to MTV, which can mean a mixture of an abandonment of linear ways of telling stories and the eclectic "stealing" of ideas and images from other sources.

Metanarrative: Jean-Francois Lyotard

The prefix meta-means "beyond" and is here used to mean "about", and narrative is a story constructed in a sequential fashion. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other "little stories" within totalizing schemes.

In postmodern philosophy, a metanarrative is an untold story that unifies and totalizes the world, and justifies a culture's power structures. Examples of these stories are nationalisms,religion, and science, to name a few. Metanarratives are not usually told outright, but are reinforced by other more specific narratives told within the culture. In the case of Christianity, the school Nativity play is a good example of this.

In communication and strategic communication, a master narrative (or metanarrative) is a "transhistorical narrative that is deeply embedded in a particular culture."^[2] A master narrative is therefore a particular type of narrative, which is defined as a "coherent system of interrelated and sequentially organized stories that share a common rhetorical desire to resolve a conflict by establishing audience expectations according to the known trajectories of its literary and rhetorical form."^[2]

Exam QU.1b: Narratives January 2011

In question 1(b) you must write about one of your media productions.


(b) Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions


25 marks