Music Video Design Breif

The common themes within a music video are:
• The production is often a narrative or a performance

• There are often intertextual links. The best example of this is telephone by lady gaga. The links are usually things such as other songs (paper gangster, playing in exercise yard), films (kill bill, the intro font and the car they drive is the same as in the film) or other artists (Michael Jackson, Gaga performs a trademark dance move of Michaels as she leaves the prison).


• The visuals that we see on screen are often synchronized to the music to make it easier for the audience to understand, such as in ‘hey ya’ when the lyrics of the song correspond with the people on screen shaking poloroid pictures, as well as the dancing being in time with the beat.



• In nearly all music videos there are frames within frames, for example in Paramore’s video ‘hallelujah’ the use of a collage helps journey the audience from one scene to the next.

Music Analysis... Outkast- Hey Ya

This music video by the band Outkast is a narrative about a band’s first time performing in England. One of the most outstanding features of this music video is the fact that all members of the band are the same person. This is because it gives the artist maximum exposure on screen and will help to promote his image. Throughout this music video there are many shots shown within other frames, such as a television or a Polaroid. This feature helps the audience to relate to the things they are seeing on the television. Finally this music video successfully relates the lyrics and rhythm of the song to the moving images on the screen. An excellent example of this is when the lyrics say “shake it like a Polaroid picture” whilst the audience is shown a woman shaking a Polaroid. This makes the music video easier for the viewer to watch as all the words of the song are backed up by the moving images.