Fraser: Code and Conventions of a Music Video

Camerawork:

• How the camera is used and how images are sequenced will have an impact upon meaning.
• Camera movement can accompany those of the performers or emphasis them, to create a more dynamic feel.
• The close up predominates, partly due to the size of the screen and to create a more intimate experience for the viewer.
• John Stewart of Oil Factory: The music video essentially has the aesthetics of the TV commercial, with lots of close ups and lighting being used most prominently for the star's face.

Editing:

• Most common form is fast cut montage, ensuring multiple viewings in order to catch all of the details
• There are videos that use slow pace and gentler transitions to establish moods. This is more apparent for female solo artists with broader audience appeal, such as Dido.
• Digital effects are used to enhance the editing, playing with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.
• These may take the forms of split screens, colourisation and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI).

Star Image:

• Richard Dyer: 'A star is an image constructed from a range of materials'. (1979)
• For pop music these materials include the songs, the record covers, media coverage, live performance and arguably most significantly the music videos.
• Each video may also draw upon its predecessor, reinforcing the star's image and taking the image further, perhaps in new ways.

Voyeurism:

• The idea originates from Freud and has been used greatly in Media Studies, particularly in explaining the gendered pleasures of cinema.
• It refers to the idea of looking in order to gain sexual pleasure.
• Laura Mulvey: Male gaze, people in media are prominently male, leading to the objectification of women.
• The female on display has been a staple element through music videos, from Scopitones to Duran Duran and beyond.
• Goodwin: The female performer will frequently be objectified, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. In male performance, the idea of voyeuristic treatment of the female body is often apparent with the use of dancers as adornments flattering the male star ego.
• The idea becomes more complex when we see the male body on display and we might raise questions about how the female viewer is invited to respond.
• Also, the powerful independent artists of recent years, from Madonna onwards, have added to the complexity of the gaze by being at once sexualy provocative and apparently in control.

Intertextuality:

• Music Videos can often be described as 'postmodern'.
• If music promos are seen frequently drawing upon existing texts in order to spark recognition from the audience, then this can be considered intertextuality.
• Not all audiences will necessarily spot the reference and this need not massively detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but is often argued that greater pleasure will be derived by those who know the reference and are somehow flattered by this.
• It is perhaps not surprising that so many music videos draw upon cinema as a starting point, since their directors are often film school graduates looking to move on eventually to the film industry itself. From Madonna's 'Material Girl' (Mary Lambert 1985, drawing on 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend') to 2Pac and Dr Dre's 'California Love' (Hype Williams 1996, drawing on 'Mad Max') there are many examples of cinematic references too, as in The Beastie Boys' spoof cop show titles sequences for Sabotage (Spike Jonze 1994) or REMs recent news show parody 'Bad Day' (Tim Hope 2003).
• John Stewart: Sees visual reference in music video coming from a range of sources, though the three most frequent are perhaps cinema, fashion and art photography. For the near future, he suspects that the influence of video games will predominate for the younger audience with the more practised look of characters emerging.
• 'Incorporating, raiding reconstructing'

Narrative and Performance:

• Narrative in songs in rarely complete, more often fragmentary, as in poetry.
• This also applies to music promos, which more often suggest storylines or offer complex fragments of them in non-linear order.
• This leaves the viewer with the desire to see it again if only to catch the bits missed on first viewing.
• Steve Archer: 'Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist's performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the 'repeatability' factor. Sometimes, the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time. But it is the lip-synch close-up and the miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it'. (2004)
• The video allows the audience access to the performer in a much greater range of ways than a stage performance could. Eye contact and facial gestures via the close up, role playing through the narrative and mise-en-scene will present the artist in a number of ways which would not be possible in a live concert.

References:

Pete Fraser, Teaching Music Video, (BFI 2004)