Music Video Genre Exploration

Music videos all belong to certain genres made noticeable by the director of that video, each genre has been partnered carefully with the music genre to gain maximum relation and exposure to the intended target audience of the music.

For example:

Parody:

Film parody music videos are often comedic and entertaining in general. This song from Limp Bizkit was made to be the accompanying song to the feature film, Mission Impossible II, the film is about spies and secret agents so the music video has paradied these ideas and created new characters out of the band members with short clips of the Mission Impossible flashing on the screen to re-itterate the partnership. This video has minimal comedic effect although it does have small showings of comedy throughout.

Low Budget/ Quirky:

Low budget music videos have recently become an established genre mainly within the Independent side of the music industry. Independent artists do not have a big budget to create music videos and will often create an interesting routine or performance to create a 'buzz' about their video, gaining free advertising through video sites such as Youtube, a good example of this being 'Ok Go - Here it goes again' creating a dance routine using running machines. Very simple and very effective. Since the explosion of 'Indie' bands from the early 2000's, many signed bands with larger budgets have created videos that seem low budget and have the same characteristics as those made with no resources to stay within the genre and to gain the same advertising and exposure they crave from being 'quirky' and different. These videos are usually very entropic.

Performance/ Spectacle:

Performance/ Spectacle music videos are made to be interesting and enticing to the viewer, keeping attention to the end, making the viewer feel as though the video is definitely worth watching till the end. They will usually be relatively high budget videos.

Sexy/Raunchy:

Sexy music videos are almost all made showing scantily clad women rather than men. They attract a certain area of the market, and are normally made for R'n'B or Rap artists tracks. This is a trend that has arisen since the mainstream inclusion of R'n'B in the UK. R'n'B male performers have been known to be very cocky and arrogant so these videos simply emphasise these 'qualities' and show their ability to have 6 or 7 model like women constantly at their side.

 

Narrative:

Narrative music videos are made to tell a story, the video above is a song about a teenager who likes a girl that doesn't take notice of him, the video simply acts this songs story out to emphasise the plot, this is a very generic and redundant storyline with a very predictable ending. The video is not made to be thought provoking or to have a big 'twist' from the normal sequence, it is telling a story and does just that. This genre of music video is especially in songs about love etc.