Music Video Styles

Music Video Styles

While some music videos transcend genres, others can be more easily categorised. Some, but not all, music channels concentrate on particular music genres. If you watch these channels then over a period of time, you will be able to identify a range of distinct features which characterise the videos of different genres. These features might be reflected in types of mise en scene, themes performance, camera and editing styles. If one were to summarise these different styles one could say they can be broken down into the following three styles:

Performance

Performance videos usually show a live performance of the artist/band or just them performing , they can include some scenes from a story/plot to make it more interesting and sometimes animation is added. 

       

Narrative

A narrative is a music video which tells a story, either non-fictionional or fictionional events, portraying a short story/film. Narrative music videos are an interesting type of music video as the narrative script is how the director interprets how the song would be visually, so the it's like making a film from a single song. This particular type of video can engage the audience as they are very interesting to watch, and the audience might be able to relate to the storyline e.g. a breakup or death in the family.

Below is a selection of my favourite narrative based music videos:

Concept Based

Concept based music videos tend to be very aesthetically unique. They are usually based around a single idea or concept, and tend to be fairly unusual or for a more niche and indie audience as the commercial world demands more 'normal' video ideas.