Sven E Carlsson stated that music video has many faces within an extensive phenomenon which is presented through the TV screen and its speakers via different carriers of information - music, lyrics and the moving images. Carlsson believed that music videos mainly fall into two key catergories : performance clips - Where the video mostly shows an artist (or band) singing or/and dancing to their song in order to promote it; and conceptual clips - Where the video shows something else (or someone else) often with artistic ambitions.
A music videos that more or less contains a filmed singer blended with inserted images. A standard clip is meant to be dynamic and has many variations. The vocalist may actively participate in the story while simultaneously standing outside the video offering self-reflexive commentary; he may have an alter ego e.g. a cartoon character.
'One of the most common methods of analysis is to break up the music video into black and white boxes. Almost everything is perceived as opposites - trash or art, commerce or creativity, male or female, naturalism or antirealism'. - BINARY OPPOSITES DRIVE THE PROGRESSION OF THE NARRATIVE WITHIN THE VIDEO. When this kind of opposite method is shown throughout a music video then the video slot itself into one the two categories.
'He or she is a monger of their own image selling everything to be in the spotlight - selling voice, face, lifestyle'
- PERFORMERS ARE RESTRICTED, A PRODUCT OF THE INDUSTRY,
There are three pure forms of visual tradition in music video:
Performance Clip
If a music video clip contains mostly filmed performance e.g. a video that shows the vocalist in more than one setting, then it is a performance clip. The performance can be of three types: song performance, dance performance and instrumental performance.
In some types of performance music video the artist is made into a materialization of the "commerical exhibitionist" (we want to gaze up this artist in an inappropriate manor & this is being provided for us by the style of 'marketing' used in music video), this is where the performer is made into almost a selling item; someone that fans often aspire to be and these scenes will be extremely high in quality and have a gloss to them, for example most main stream pop artists like for example Rhianna are heavily materialised in their videos, EG: Rhianna S&M - a video which youtube put age restrictive bans upon! The exhibitionist wants success and tries to evoke the charisma of stardom and sexuality & model their character upon that of the artist.
Another type is the "televised bard" (lyrical poet) the singing storyteller -who uses on screen images instead of inner, personal images - acts the songs emotions.
The the third and final type is the "elctronic shaman" (A person having access to, and influence in, the world of spirits), sometimes the shaman is invisible and only his/her voice that anchors the visuals and they often shift between multiple shapes.
( A televised bard is basically like a singing storyteller who uses actual on screen images)
Narrative Clip
If a music video clip is understood as a silent movie to a musical background it is a narrative clip - based around acting a story which corresponds to the lyrical message, rather than being incongruous to it or representative of certain themes explored. A narrative contains a story which is generally extremely easy to follow and may not contain any lip-synchronisation at all, for example Ed Sheeren's 'A team' is mainly a narrative based song in which a female impoverished prostitute evokes the audiences sympathy as she displays her life of sorrow - using a monochromatic effect to amplify her actions.
Art Clip / Conceptual
If a music video contains no interpretable visual in the narrative and contains no lip-synchronisation singing then it is a pure art clip. These are normally associated with more modern, experimental music, EG: Radio head no surprises - where the lead singer is lip syncing but the style of the video illuminates the illusion is actually performing willingly. Conceptual videos force the audience to watch something other than the artist throughout the video. They contains no visual narrative and no lip-synchronisation, this means that it is pure art.
No comments:
Post a Comment