The Purpose Of A Music Video

The sole purpose of a music video is to promote a single from an album or just a single; it also works as promotion for the artist/band. A music video is a good way to manipulate a celebrities image, a major reason is to allow the artist/band to change their image and style according to changes in music preference and music that is selling. Having a music video give the audience the opportunity to further understand what the song I about an example of this is Kanye West "Through the wire" the video signifies how important life is and how lucky he is to have survived his car crash. This was cleverly done by having an animated story board of photos showing video clips of his life reanacted this is an example of a music video having a narrative. The different effects in a video connote and draw on different emotions a vibrant video with loads of effects and colours give the video an interesting appeal and attract a younger audience whilst a black and white video allows for the audience to feel sympathetic adding to the entertainment by engaging the audience.








The typical run time for a music video averages between 3-4 minutes, the scenery of a video doesn’t have to Mach the song as you can have an abstract video for a song that makes perfect sense in reality, in other cases you can have a performance video where the artist dances and sings in these videos the artist will have lip-synchronisation throughout the song or in parts the song. In some cases an artist will have scenery from actual real life places, if the song is a featured sound track of a film there is most likely going to be clips of the film in the video an example of this is Twista "Hope" which the song features in the film Coach Carter.

Andrew Goodwins Theory of music videos

Andrew Goodwin says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the Star image of the artist. Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.

Many of these features are present in all music videos, depending on the genre of the song and the aim of the record company/artist.

Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features in music videos. They are as follows:

- Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.

- A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.

- Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.

- A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

- Genre-related style and iconography present.

- Inter textual references to other media texts may be present.

history of music videos

Music video analysis

This is Chris browns hit single "Don’t wake me up" this song doesn’t follow a particular narrative but the concept of the song is to not be woken up because living in the dream is great because in this dream hChris Brown has everything he could want and the girl of his dreams. The connotation behind the different images is to live life like it is a dream where by you enjoy every moment of it.

this song is a song that is designed to put people in a good mood.

The next song I have decided to analyse is Kanye West "Through The Wire" the narrative of this song is about Kanye's Car accident and how it almost killed him and he survived, even though he survived the crash almost ended his career before it started as he broke his jaw. He then had to have an operation where he was already told he might never rap again. The message behind the story is a positive one that you should keep your faith and stay positive. The video consist of a story board of photos and as the audience we go into the photos and a short clip is played from that clip about kanye West's life this in turn shows the audience how lucky he is to keep his life after such a big crash.

This song is another by Kanye West this is one of his hit singles "Flashing lights" the concept of this song is him cheating on his girlfriend and that the only reason he got caught is because of the paparazzi took a photo and put it in a magazine. The video itself is quite graphic as it consist of his girlfriend he cheated on driving kanye west to a desert he is Tied up in the boot of a car she then kills him with a shovel. The moral behind the video is to not cheat on your partner as you will always be caught somehow.

Production schedule

This is our production schedule that me and my group are going to stick by in order to get our project completed to the best standard possible I believe this schedule is the best way to manage and organize ourselves as a group we have left a few days free to account for contingency time