Three Categories of Music Videos

The Three Categories Of Music Videos

Performance Based

This type of music video features the band or artist performing said song through usually the majority or sometimes even through the entirety of the music video. Therefore, this would be the cheapest and easiest style of music video to produce, providing you could find a suitable location. A good example of this would be The Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘Can’t Stop’ as throughout the majority of the music video the lead singer and artist. With the rather simplistic style of music video, it could easily be achieved on a budget whilst being engaging for the audience, but I would prefer if our group were to steer towards a deeper narrative based video.

Narrative Based

A narrative based music video contains footage that attempts to depict a story through the use of a moving image. There doesn’t have to be a correlation between the content of the lyrics and that of the music video, but more often than not the two relate in one way or another.  This music video is sometimes popular with movie soundtracks as footage from the movie intertwined with the song. A good example of such a music video would be Nickelback’s ‘Far Away’, as there is a delicate balance between a narrative and performance, which allows the audience to engage and escape accordingly. In our music video we will be looking to intertwine the two elements of this music video more closely. 

Concept Based

This style of music video that is based around a single idea or a concept, with these videos tending to be rather strange or unusual. In addition to this a concept based music video is rather rare, as not only are they rather hard to think up but this is the hardest type of music to create an appeal with. A good example is OK Go’s ‘Here It Goes Again’ as it draws on solely one idea, using treadmills, but it still creates an engaging atmosphere for the audience, which owes itself to the tempo of the song but due to the rarity and difficulty surrounding this type of music video, this is something we will steer clear of.