So, the music video has grown into a giant form in its own right. When planning to make a music video, like a short film, its good to know the codes and conventions of the different GENRES of music video.
Be careful of the word GENRE, in film studies, strictly speaking, it means something different. But we could easily use the word TYPES and that'd be cool too.
This video, if you can bare with the highly enthusiastic delivery of some of the guys is a decent way to introduce the different TYPES of music videos. I think they miss out on a few and I don't agree that 'special effects' is a type of music video. Nor is 'animation'. Animation could tell a story, which makes is a NARRATIVE. Or it could simply be lovely visuals with a theme: IMPRESSIONISTIC.
That all said, it is worth checking it out.
To get into the different types you'll need to understand a little about the codes and conventions and maybe history of the word used. (For example, what is Surrealism?) Before looking at actual videos and deciding if they fit that type or not. Or maybe are a mix of types.
Easiest place to start though is PARODY.
PARODY
A light hearted way of imitating another artist, a film, a style or a genre.
Weird Al Yankovic has made a career out of parody. He not only makes a music video which is a parody but the song itself is a parody of the artist.
Another good Parody is the Eminem video for 'We Made You' were he sends up a lot of other famous artists. In some ways he is also pardoying music videos themselves, all music videos, making a mockery of the very form, which is something you'd expect from such a subversive artist.
NARRATIVE
When your choosing which style you want to make your video in, you'll certainly consider narrative: the telling of a story in a music video. Often, I found, students jump to this style because they are keen to make short films and this is a good chance to exercise that desire. Problem with that though. Narrative stories in music videos tend to be different from shorts. They are less subtle, because the producers don't want you to forget the music and the band may not like if you make a short film that really takes away from their song and the meaning of their song.
Certainly they were more popular in the 90s than they are today. Here's a few.
Here's a student attempt at doing at narrative music video with the song 30 seconds to Mars. I'm not making any comment on whether or not I think it's any good. You should decide for yourself if they've managed to tell a story, and if they haven't, what did they do wrong?
For a bit of freak, check out the brilliantly wrong video for Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy. It classes as narrative, although within that it is edging towards horror/extremism.
Here's another for those old romantics amongst you.
IMPRESSIONISTIC
From my own point of view, this is my favourite type of music video. One that you can watch again and again without finding any definate meaning: simply a beautiful mixture of image and sound that compliment one another and suggest at hidden meanings but never tramp all over your emotions to create them. In essence impressionistic music videos are like memories that we know we've experienced but just can't exactly remember how or when. They have a universiality to them and a sense of the otherness of being human.
Drawbacks, and why they aren't as popular as other forms, is that they don't reward quickly and not everyone is into the experience I've charted above. Probably for the same reason great, artistic films usually don't find massive audiences because for some, their subtle approach is exactly what makes them unappealing. Some audiences like being told what is happening and like knowing that everything fits nicely together. Which I can understand. Others, however, don't mind tripping on more unstable ground as it is this ground that offers them some kind of solidity and possibly a sense of truth.
Check out the fabulous Sigur Ros (Untitled. Now fixed.
Slight tangent, and you'll find this a hard watch at first, but stick with it, this is not strictly speaking a music video, but it is a good example of an impressionistic piece of moving image which COULD easily be a music video. It's a very famous silent movie from the late 1920s called Berlin: Symphony of a City. It's worth studying simply because of the quality of the editing; the pictures sing.
And while we're at it, here's a film made by Man Ray, a famous French artist and part of the SURREALIST movement in the same period. You can see aspects of what would become later techniques used a lot in music videos (spinning visuals, without any reference). It's not strictly impressionistic, it is more surrealist.
SURREALISM IN MUSIC VIDEOS
This will melt your head a little. And surrealism is much wrongly understood. Here's a comedian explaining exactly what surrealism is, and isn't.
FEW RESOURCES
Good definition of impressionism and its roots: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-impressionism.htm
Useful resource which covers some of the basic theorectical underpinnings to narrative in music videos and narrative in general. Worth a look: http://www.slideshare.net/ksomel/music-video-narrative
