Music Video conventions

The first task we were given in our coursework was to take 6 music videos and analyse the videos. This included the duration of the music video, Mise-en-scene within the video and the ratio between the narrative and the performance within the music video.

By analyzing these 6 videos I learnt a wide variety of things about music videos, for example, the ratio between performance and narrative. The majority of music videos are a mixture of performance and narrative, it is not always a perfect balance of the two but rather a 60% to 40% split. However, not all music videos follow this pattern as two of the music videos I analysed were completely one content ratio.

The Alter Bridge song that I analysed was purely performance based containing no narrative whatsoever, and the song by Five Fingered Death Punch was purely narrative and contained no performance by the band. This shows that not all videos are a mixture of performance and narrative, however, I don’t think that I am going to path of pure narrative or pure performance as there would not be enough substance to the music video.

To see the analysis of the 6 music videos click the image below.