Style of Music Videos
A music video is a short film integrating a song, it is generally made for promotional or artistic purposes. In today's world there are many different styles of music videos used, these include: Performance, Narrative, Cameo and Notion of looking.
Performance
Performance style music videos focus on the artist or band simply performing the song, either on their own or live in front of an audience. They would never usually have a narrative to the video, simply just a performance shown through various different camera angles, shots and movements. Many music genres use this style of music video, particularly rock, indie and even house music. Below are some music videos using the performance style.
Coldplay's Glowing Gig - Charlie Brown, Paradise
This music video is purely a performance based video. The entire video uses various camera shots from long to close ups, also using movements like panning and tracking and extremely long shots with tracking to get the audience involved in the performance as well. There was a great amount of camera angles used which were simple but effective. All the cinematography, is used to show the different band members performing the song. Mis en scene is used very well here with the use of neon lights around the stage set up and with the instruments themselves, the band also wore bright colours to match the scene and the crowd were giving neon sticks to carry on the mis en scene all around.
Narrative
Narrative style videos usually include small performance clips with a story line. The video usually either includes random people or the performer themselves acting out the story which they are trying to tell through their song and video. The characters involved in the video acting out generally tries to tell a story related to the lyrics. The video also includes small performance clips of the artist or band either singing or playing an instrument and sometimes dancing. This style of music video is generally very popular in the hip hop and pop genres, however some genres may also choose to use this style for a particular music video.
Katy Perry - Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)
As this music video is longer than most and the way it is, it almost seems like a short film. There are various reasons for this, firstly the credits at the begining and the acting to tell a story of a typical American high school party. In order to do this they use many different types of cinematography, including movements angles and shots. The mise-en-scene is also extremely important in this video, as they use a typical American suburb with large houses which is what you would expect to see in a typical American teenage movie.
Cameo
Cameo style videos use other people to play the artist in the music video, sometimes famous people can be used. The person or people used to feature in the music video very rarely sing or perform. However the artist themselves can sometimes feature with performance shots whilst the narrative style is also used via the alternative characters.
Kanye West - Coldest Winter
This music video uses a young girl to feature as the main character in the video, she is used to tell the story of the music video and song. The artist Kanye West does not feature at all throughout the music video so making the audience aware that this women must be him. The music video also uses different cinematography and editing to help with effect the music video attempts to give off, which is very emotional and deep.
