Introduction to Music Videos.

What is a music video? A music video promotes a song by helping to tell a story of the lyrics and it also gives the audience something to remember. A music video serves many purposes. One of the obvious reasons being to simply sell the artists music by giving visual aids to accompany the song and maybe a less obvious reason would be to influence fans into maybe helping to stand up for any world political problems that the artist may believe in or wants to help change. The impact a music video can have is to attract more loyal fans and get them interested in the artist's other music, and also to sometimes draw and emotional impact based on the narrative of the video. The typical elements of a conventional music video include:- -The artist being present in the music video -The editing and setting reflect the genre of the music Synergy is also present in this industry in forms of:- -Radio -TV -Print -Film Soundtrack Other Elements in a music video can include Performance(lip syncing),Narrative(a storyline in video), Thematic(Follows a theme e.g. Gorrillaz), symbolic(e.g. Madonna)and rhythmic(matches the pace of the song). Also, music videos tend to be visually stylish and contain a mixture of both performance and narrative. Music videos such as Rihanna's 'We Found Love' video received a lot of criticism because it wasnt very conventional. The adult themes that were included in the video-sex, drugs, smoking and violence- made it very controversial. The full version even got banned from TV and YouTube because it was inappropriate for younger viewers. This may have portrayed these sensitive topics as being okay and almost fun throughout this video which is why some people were very negative towards it, while other viewers loved it. Linkin Park's music videos can be very Thematic they all seem to be very 'loud' to watch and there is always a lot going on.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kXYiU_JCYtU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> This particular music video has a narrative and performance. It is about a girl who feels lost in the world, and she has no friends. She suffers through life with issues such as self harm and self loathing. This all matches the lyrics of the song(Numb-Linkin Park) "Every step that I take, I another mistake to you. And every second I waste is more that I can take." This allows fans to empathise with the female in the video and also to relate to her, if they are going through the same problems as she is. As this band are not very mainstream, they have a loyal fanbase so they are not looking to become mainstream. This is why they use quite sensitive themes in their songs and videos because they know a lot of people do suffer in silence with these kinds of things.