Carol Vernallis

In her works 'Experiencing Music Videos: Aesthetics and Cultural Context' (2004) and 'Unruly Media: Youtube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema' (2013) Carol Vernallis identifies 4 key concepts that all relate to the way a music video is produced, these are:

• Narrative
• Editing
• Camera Movement and Framing
• Diegesis

Narrative

The video is a visual response to the narrative. Therefore whatever is happening on screen in some way reflects the choice of lyrics that the artist is singing. However, the narrative may not always be completed and can be partial with the video appearing disjointed, disconnected and appear in fragments. The video has something driving it forward but this may not necessarily be the narrative, it could be the music itself or other elements in the video. However if the video is left uncompleted it can lead to many questions about the narrative that wont always be answered throughout the video. Finally although the video may have a theme or a narrative, it is probably displayed in a montage style rather than in one clear focus.

Editing

A clear convention of music editing is that the video may disrupt or break the conventions of continuity editing. The editing may also be bought to the foreground, become visible and not hidden as apposed to the invisible style of continuity editing, meaning the video will have a style of editing running throughout that is distinctive to that video. For example, you may see:

• Jump Cuts
• Breaks of the 30 Degree Rule
• Extreme Changes in Pace
• Juxtaposed Frames

Camera Movements and Framing

Establishing shots are one of the key camera features of a music video and are used frequently throughout a music video as well as close-up shots. The style of framing of the video again is quite distinctive to the video and at time the camera may move in time with the lyrics.

Diegesis

In terms of media, the diegesis is the world of the music video, the diegesis is usually revealed quite slowly. The actions in the video won't always be completed and may be disrupted in some way. There will be many repetitions throughout the video and some frames will appear more important than others due to the way they have been framed.

Vernallis, Carol. 2004. Experiencing Music Videos: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. Columbia University Press.
Vernallis, Carol. 2013. Unruly Media: Youtube, Music Video and the New Digital Cinema. Oxford University Press.