Steve Archer

Steve Archer

In addition to looking at Goodwin's key elements of music videos I have researched Steve Archer as he has drawn attention to the need to consider the relationship between narrative and performance in music promos. The following are the key elements of a music video:

1. Lyrics

Lyrics tend to help establlish a general feeling, or mood, or sense of subject matter rather than offering a coherent meaning. key lines may play a part in the visuals associated with the song but very rarely will a music video simply illustrate the lyrics wholesale.

2.Music

A music video tends to make use of the tempo of the track to drive the editing and may emphasise particar sounds from the track by foregrounding instruments such as guitar, keyboard or drum solo.

3.Genre

while some music videos transcend genres others can be more easily categorised. Some, but not all, music channels over a period of time, you will be able to identify a rage of distinct features which characterise the video of different genres. These features might be reflected in types of mise en scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles.


4.Camerwork


As with any moving image text, how the camera is used and how images are seguenced has a significant impact on the meaning. camera movement, angle and shot distance all need to be analysed. Camera movement may accompany movement of performers (walking, dancing ect) but it may also be used to create a more dynamic feel to stage performance, for instance, by constantly ciircling the band as they perform on stage.


5.Editing


Although the most common form of editing associated witht the music promo is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple vewing, some videos use slow pace and gentler shot transitions to establish mood. This is partucularly apparent in promos for many felmale solo artists with a broad audience appeal, Such as Dido. Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the orignal images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience. This might take the form of split-screen, colourisation and, of course, the use of blockbuster film-style CGI special effects.


6.Intertextuality


This music video is often described as a 'post-modern' form, a slippery term which is sometimes used to mean intertextuality, on of the post modernism's more easily identifiable features. Broadly, if we see music promos as frequently drawing upon existing texts in oder to spark recognition in the audience, we have a working definition of intertextuality. Not all audiences will necessarily spot a reference and this need not significantly detract by those who recognise the reference and feel flattered by this. Arguably, it also increases the audience's engagement with, and attentiveness to product, an important facility in a culture where so many images and narratives complete for out attention.


7. Narrative and Performance


Narrative in songs, as in poetry, is rarely complete and often fragmentary. the same is true of music promos, which tend to suggest story-lines or offer complex fragments in non-linear order, leaving the viewer with the desire to see them again.

The Video allows the audience more varied access to the performer than a stage performance can. the close-up, allowing eye contact and close observation or facial gestures, and role play, within a narrative framework, present the artist in a number or ways not possible in a live concert.