Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis' music video theory comes from the book 'Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, she suggests that there are 4 key elements which should be included in music videos and should be used when analysing a music video. The key elements are; 

1. Narrative 

In the book Vernallis states that a music video is created as a response to a song and the lyrics, not the other way around. The video should be able to visualise and create a response to the song, with the artist still remaining a key feature of the music video in order to keep audience appeal. She also states in the book that there no need for there to be a balance between the performance and narrative, meaning that often in music videos the performance is prioritised as it shows off the artist the most. It can occur with the narrative overtaking the performance but this is not frequent and often only happens with already established artists. 

2. Diegesis 

Diegesis is the world within the music video. This is normally brought in slowly throughout the video to allow the development of the story. In order for the audience to pick up on the alternative world, repetition is key as reinforces the similarities and differences that may not be obvious straight away.

3. Camera movements and Shots 

Vernallis suggested that extreme camera shots are common, especially in the establishing shots of the music video. She noticed that artist usually avoid the use of midshots within their music videos, possibly because they view them as simple or less artistic, whereas the use of common framing and movement are found throughout the music video industry. 

4. Editing  

During the editing process some artists occasionally match the beat of the song, which links back to one of Andrew Goodman's features 'linking the music and visuals'. This gives the audience a chance to relate to the music and visuals together, as well as other features to make them feel more connected with the artist. In terms of continuity editing, music videos tend to use a more abstract form of editing, moving between locations, times and even costumes. 

Andrew Godwin's 6 Features of Music Videos

Andrew Goodwin suggested in his book, Dancing in the Distraction Factory, that 6 different features, elements or characteristics are present in all music videos. 

1. Genre Characteristics - 

Genre characteristics are elements of a music video and other forms of media which are able to identify the genre on the media to the audience. This is normally due to past music videos creating 'trends' that future artists copy or adapt into their own, creating different features that the audience are able to recognise at a later time. An example of this is majority of girl/boy bands feature dance routines in their music videos.

2. Relationship between lyrics and visuals - 

In a music video, the artist/creator will usually visualise the subject of the lyrics with the image shown to the audience, helping them to understand the subject of the song. Some music videos will visualise the lyrics literally, whilst others will create a more abstract way so denoting the meaning to the audience. For some artists they find it more beneficial for themselves to have the music video contradict the meaning of the song, for example a sad ballad having an happy and upbeat music video.

3. Relationship between music and the visuals - 

Music videos can also create a  relationship between the music and the visuals. An example of this is the artist matching the tone of the song with the visuals, such as a high pitched song having a happy music video. This can again be done in the literal sense or more abstractly, as this feature is similar to the second feature. 

 

4. Demands of a record label 

An artists record label will often have certain requirements when their artist is creating a music video. This is because it will help them to advertise their record label, boosting their sells. The record label often requires artists to be in their music video, although some artist such as Sia have refused this but have created another identity for themselves. 

5. The notion of looking 

In most music videos there is a strong element of the male gaze. This is normally presented through a voyeuristic view of the female body. It is common in both male and female artists music videos. 

6. Intertextual references 

Music videos often have either direct or indirect  intertextual references to other media formats. This can be as subtle as a character reading a magazine or the whole music video having references to another format such as a film. 

Extra Notes On The Theory: 

Audience Research

To collect audience research I created a questionnaire on SurveyMonkey to collect information. In order to get our results, we shared the questionnaire on our social media platforms. Mainly Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Our questions were:

1. What age group are you in?

We used this question to help establish the age range of our respondents to decide if our ideas matched our target audience.

  

This connotes to us that the majority of people who answered our questionnaire were 16-18, which could suggest that this age group would be the most likely age group that would be wanting to watch a music video from our artist. This meant our main target audience for the music video is going to be 16-18.

2. What is your gender?

We asked this question to the respondents in order to have an understanding on what gender we should target in the making of the music video. 

Our results show a mixed response. This means that we are going to make our target audience both male and female, instead of putting our main focus into one gender. This will also make the music video more accessible.  

3. How often do you watch music videos?

This question was to determine how popular music videos are with our selected target audience.

This denotes to us that music videos are very popular for our target audience as most people watch them at least 1-3 times a week. This suggests that music videos can help an artist with promoting their song or album to the public. 

4. What genre of music do you listen to the most?

This question was used to determine which genre of music our music video should be.

The most popular genre of music was pop, this helped us to decide to create a pop music video.

5. What platform do you watch music videos on?

This question was used so we could decide what platform we would upload our music video to.

The results suggest that YouTube was the most popular platform to view music videos, so we decided to upload our music video to YouTube when completed.

6. Do you think music videos are important to success of the artist? Why?

This question was used to see if music videos are important in helping promote the artist and their song.

These are some of the response we received;

The results suggest that most people believe that the music video does help the music artist, this means that the music video has to be made to a high standard, because if is not then people may not feel as if the artist is worth spending money on.  

7. What music video did you watch last? Did you enjoy it? Why did/didn't you enjoy it?

This question was used to see what kind of music videos people like to watch. 

Here are a few of the results; 

Some of our results show that people liked their music video because it contained an aspect of 'fun', during the filming of our video we hope to make the video slightly upbeat and fun.

8. Did you purchase the song after watching the music video?

This question was used to understand if music videos can influence people to buy the music, or not.

Majority of the respondents said that they already had the song for the music video they watched, meaning that the music video doesn't always help with extra sales, but enhances the experience for those who already like the song. 

9. What do you expect to see in a music video?

This question was used so that we knew what we should incorporate into our music video

These are some of the results;

The results connote to us that the most popular answers were the artist with a total of 13 responses with the narrative (7 responses) coming second. We decided from this that the artist should be in the music video and that we should create a narrative for the music video.

10. Do you prefer narrative or abstract music videos? Why do you prefer this?

This question was used to help us make a final decision if we should make an abstract or narrative based music video.

Some of the results are; 

In total, 12/18 of our responses said they would prefer to watch a music video with a narrative, so we made a final decision to have narrative structure for the music video.

Postmodernism - Jessie J

Elements of postmodernism: