Narrative Theory

Narrative is almost always subordinate to performance. A song rarely tells a complete narrative--not the full begin to end that you would see for a film or a book. Music videos often rely on more traditional styles of narrative.

Post-modernism--where texts are created by copying and reusing ideas / images  that have been used in a previous texts. An example of this is Madonnas Materials girls opening is an exact copy of the Marilyn Monroe film--with the exact copy of the dress and male dancers and the choreography. But seem in some of Fat boy slims videos they are often more playful, shocking, or even unconventional at time as a result of taking inspiration from other resources.

Nobody really knows- there are so many definitions of it by so many different academics that it has become a phrase used to describe anything that looks culturally avante garde in an old school.

 

Andrew Goodwin,
Goodwin has identified the following features of music videos, music videos demonstrate genre characteristics for example a stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band, these are very typical for those type of genre music. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.There is often inter textual reference to other texts for example previous films, TV programmes, other music videos.

Steven Archer's Theory

He believed in music videos that there needs to be a strong and coherent relationship between narrative and performance in music promos. The music videos will cut--often to the beat of the song for pace, between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band.A Pop music video especially might feature a choreographed dance rountine this might or could be classed as thr artists performance--this element of the video is there to be visually appealing and have the most important factor--repeatability.

 

John Steward

He said that music video has the aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close-ups and lighting being used to focus on the star’s face. It is a very typical convention used for pop artists who want the limelight and attention--doesn't feature so much in Indie/Alternative bands. The visual references comes from a range of sources, most frequently cinema, fashion and art photography. The video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.

 

 Laura Mulvey

She had strong views in the way music videos represented woman. Because filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in films is often solely for the purposes of display-to look pretty on camera, instead of conterbuting to the narrative of the video. On some video theey are almost seem as a object-placed on a scene.