Three Typologies of Music Videos

Narrative:

Narrative music videos are those that tell a story. There are many different ways a story can be told in a music video. A narrative can be edited alongside the performance of the artist so that the video cuts back and forth between elements of performance and narrative or sometimes the artist can be involved in the narrative in some way and can even be lip synching as they act in the narrative. In other examples the artist can be performing in the same location as the narrative is occurring. Having a narrative generally means there is a clear beginning, middle and end but sometimes narratives can be a bit more abstract and actually the narrative progresses very little from the start to the finish. Narrative music videos often help to tell the story that is already present in the lyrics of the song and other times the narrative is more of an open interpretation of the lyrics or seems almost completely unrelated. Narratives engage the audience by providing enigmas and mystery as audiences will want to see how the stories will end because they will have questions they want answering.



Performance:

Performance based music videos are when the artist performs for the camera. Bands usually use concert footage in their performance music videos as it sells the experience to the audience and the crowd will always be having a good time to the song the band is performing and will not only make the song look exciting but it advertises their concerts therefore making people want to buy tickets to see them live. This exciting feeling can also be created by the amount of shots used in the video for example if theres a lot of fast cutting it will create a upbeat tempo.  However you could also say that another example of performance based music videos is either the band or a solo artist performing a dance for the camera.

Concept: 

Concept based music videos are usually simple ideas that have been developed and will have no relation to the music or lyrics or the song. Instead of being dependant on the story and what happens on the screen, concept based videos are more dependent on the mise-en-scene and camera angles to create movement and life to the video. Most concept based videos have parts of all the typologies usually with performance, meaning there isn’t much sense to the video but the band or artist is shown now and again performing. But some are purely concept based and do not make any sense at all!