Research Into Music Videos

Sven E Carlsson Theory

Facts about music videos:

• Music videos communicate through TV screens and TV speakers.
• They are the form of low brow popular culture. (Michael Shore)
• The reception depends on what the audience perceives the video as for example beautiful or ugly.
• To analyse music videos the most common method used is black and white boxes as the videos are perceived as opposites but the main two groups are performance and conceptual clips.

Music Video Artist As A "Modern Mythic Embodiment

Method of analysis.

Three types of performances:

Commercial exhibitionist means the monger of their own body image selling everything to be in a spotlight; selling the voice, face, lifestyle, records and so on. Wants success herefore tries to evoke their sexuality and stardom. (Carlsson Report)

A telivised bard is a singing storyteller who uses acutual on screen images instead of inner, personal images. The greatest telivision bards create audio-visual poetry. They transform the banal story of the lyrics employing on screen images to create a story about life and death. (Carlsson Report)

Electronic Shaman. This is when the artist is invisible and only their voice and rhythm anchor the visuals. The artist shifts between multiple shapes as well as sometimes has multiple egos. This performance also promises there is a hidden meaning. (Carlsson Report)

Analysing Cher's Video Believe

This video uses the method of modern mythical embodiment an can be seen as an electronic shaman performance. It is this video type because of the electronic use of visual effects. Cher's eyes glow in the dark whilst being in a close up then fog arises as people walk in a slow motion and dreamy way. The video which suggests it is like a spiritual journey finishes with a mystical green which surrounds her as some kind of exchange is passed between her and the younger female. A vocoder on her voice is also used at this point to inform the audience about her pain and the younger girl who is implied as her younger soul sister. Cher's voice and the synthesized dance rhythms suggest a dreamy journey. Cher is seen as a telivison bard because she is singing her story of there is life after love and how she is watching her ex boyfriend around happy people. She also relates to normal teenage girls as a commerical commodity as well as she is seen as a commercial exhibitionist by the way she promotes healthy bodies. Below is a video of Cher's Believe music video.

Audiovisual Analysis of Music Video

Uses the crude model which help identifies how three areas of the audio visual flow that are music, image and text. This is to interact with producing meaning for the audio viewers of music videos. Below is the diagram of the 'Crude Map' that identified three aspects of the audio visual flow; the music, image and text interact.

The Music

The director of the music video creates moving pictures to be shown for an already existing song. A video which does not have a narrative purpose that is based on the visual images instead uses aspects that is not a typical convention of music. The moving images are bound together by musical features such as a beat. To some lyrics a synchronized movement is used for example if they use the word shoes the movement or action would have relevance to this such as a point to the feet. Melodic phrases can also be displayed by having the camera titling vertically to match up to the term up and down travel on the scales. In the music video Believe by Cher, a synthesized cymbal rattle sound was used. This is when a sound is synchronized with effects of lighting and sometimes presents body movements.

The Lyrics

Many music videos have a new meaning that is added to the lyrics through a metaphorical language with a twist that is entertaining. If this is done well the lyrics and text creates a poetic experience. The bigger the gap between the lyrics and imagery in the metaphorical joining the more difficult it is for the audience to understand and interpret the context. The opposite of the metaphorical joining of lyrics and images happens when the lyrics are the illustrated. When the visual story is missing the story is still continuing by music and lyrics and not by an independant visual story.

In Cher's video believe the first verse reads, "I can't break through" and "so sad", a viusal echo isn made by special effects. This is known as a text image metaphor, this is a type of cliche which again presents the image and lyrics as one or has a type of link. For example in the video Cher has military trousers on and sings repeatedly "I don't need you anymore" this shows force and power in a way.

The Image

Colour, motive setting, story footage, clothing etc are manipulated so that the director can create ideas which would be repeated and varied.

Perceiving Music Videos

There are different levels of perception when viewing a music video. Interacting layers of perception may be instinctive, intersubjective and individual which then activates social aspects. When the layers interact with personal memories the video becomes complicated. Variables occur on a regular basis and tend to be content. Music video pictures can be constructed by the three traditional of moving images; visual story telling, non narration of modern art and singing performance.

Since 1927, The Jazz Singer; Oh Mama, concert performances were born. This type of performance has continued in musicals, documentaries of concerts and promotion pictures. The concept of this performance type is to take the well known singer performing and place in the setting that either literally suggested by the song's lyrics or in one that the mirror escapists pleasantries common to movie musicals.

In music video clips the paraphrases, collages, animated abstract art computer graphics and unexpected combinations of pictures may appear. The chock aesthetics in videos can be interpreted as a combination of provocative modern art tradition and cultural interpretation of the rebellion teenage. (Swen. E. Carlsson)

Visual Music Video Styles

Standard Clip:

Contains more or less than three traditional visuals; a singer is filmed with images mixed and is presented in an artistic influence by the experimental film tradition.

The clip has many variations and is dynamic. The singer may participate in the narrative as well as standing outside the video offering diversity and flexibility, this can be done through alter egos, clothes changes, time change and change in shape.

Performance Clip:

This type of performance video is when the singer is one or more settings, the most common places where the artist performs is the recording studio and rehearsal room however it can be done anywhere. The performance clip can be separated into three; song, dance and instrumental performance.

Narrative Clip:

This is when the clip is understood as a short silent movie to a musical background, it contains a visual story that is easy to follow and understand. A complete narrative clip involves no lip syncing.

Art Clip:

If the video contains no lip syncing or visual narrative then it is a pure clip of art. The difference between these videos is the music type. Dance videos tend to be art clips due to it being difficult to express the meanings whereas rock videos usually include standard clips and shots from concerts and the narrative story line. The videos are usually grouped into theme and variations, this applied to music which is a melody or motif.

What is a music video?

Andrew Goodwin states that music videos do not follow the cinematic conventions that Swen claims, he refers to it as having their individual conventions. As well as he says that narrative relations are complicated and this means it can be made from the viewers taste to intertexuality that uses multi-discursive phenomena of the western culture. An example of this is George Micheal's video; Killer/ Papa Was A Rolling Stone, this illustrates the lyrics as logotypes but also with real logos of products. The music video also used concert audio for the music however it does not contain any concert clips only shots of close ups and lip syncing. Art clips are used instead. Goodwin hopes to this would get its own theory and not the old such as 'amputated' to fit the music videos.


Author: Kiran Paul