Music Video Types

By Alice Sophie Turrell

Performance

With performance based videos, they often show the band or artist performing on stage live. Another variation is the band or artist playing in a location – such as a field or in a building. This style of music video is most popular with rock bands as it shows their energy and attitude best. In terms of how the videos are filmed, there are various typical shots used in performance videos, such as from the audiences point of view, looking at the crowd, and close ups of the artists playing instruments. More often than not, performance and narrative styles are put together to show both the band performing and a story line.A good example of a performance video is Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer.

Narrative

A narrative video shows a story line to go along with the song that often connects, giving visual aid to the song. These are quite popular with pop artists and see them acting out different scenarios. The way they are filmed is similar to the way films and TV shows are filmed, with shots that go well together to create more of a story and often show the story over a period of time. To link the video more closely to the music, they often cut between narrative and performance. I think that this is the most effective way of showing a music video as having the mixture of both performance and narrative shows the audience what the band is like and visuals to go with the song. A good example of this is type of video is Eminem’s Stan video which also shows some performance along with story.

Conceptual

Concept videos are often similar to narrative videos, except for the fact they have no real point or link to the song. These can be shot in any way really, and often rely heavily on editing. These can also be cartoon/animated style videos. Lyric videos fall into the conceptual video category as they have no real meaning and rely a lot on editing. An example is Fall Out Boy’s America’s Suitetheart’s video which is conceptually based but includes elements of performance and narrative.