What is a music video?

What is a music video? Three days grace - Never too late.

The main purpose of a music video is to promote an artist or band and the song that that particular video is made for. If it a good video people will want to watch it again and might tell others about it which will in tern boost popularity of that song and the artist which is good for the record label that own that particular artist, band or group. The target audience for this video is people aged between 15-30 as it has an emotionally fuelled story line that some teenagers can relate to but also falls under the genre of ‘rock’ which is usually aimed at a wider range of audience in terms of age as it is for a niche audience and is done to compensate for this.   

This music video by Three days grace opens with the lead singer of the band sitting on a stool and playing a guitar. He is also wearing a black t-shirt. This one shot conforms to many stereotypes of this music genre and follows the conventions of the rock genre as many other videos in this genre feature a lot of people in either dark or black colours. For example as a request by the record label it is focusing on a band member for publicity, he is surrounded by and is wearing black (signifying death), which is a stereotype of the heavy metal music genre. Also the shot includes the singer playing a guitar, a guitar being the iconic symbol of rock and metal. This is important as it allows the target audience to identify this video as a particular genre and helps to make the video attractive to the demographic as most of the audience for this genre tend to play similar or the same instruments as the band members which can help create a relationship between the artist and the viewer.

One of the conventions of any music video is that fast paced montages are used and this video is no different, in this video it is used to tell a story for example there are short clips of a narrative merged with a performance from the band in quick succession, this story is a sad one and conforms to the ‘emo’ rock genre stereotype that it is depressing for example the subject matter of this video is made up of a story of a young girl who is abused and becomes mentally unstable when she grows up. It is filled with sadness and anger which is effective in getting the audience involved and wanting to watch the video, this is done by the heavy use of close up shots of the characters faces to show emotion. There is a large use of shadows to convey lots of sad emotions in the video.

The audience also see the whole of the band playing their instruments, which is another common theme within the genre of rock. The girl featured in the video is wearing a white dress to connote her as being innocent and pure, this is done to create contrast between her and the man who is attacking her who is wearing red and black, red being the colour of anger, blood and violence and black again conveying death and authority over the girl. The shots of the girl are mainly high angle shots so they are looking down on her, which gives the impression that she is inferior and the shots of the man are low angle shots, which makes him look more powerful in the story.

Also this video conforms to one of Laura Mulvey’s stereotypes that women are either seen as ‘whores’ or as innocent virginal characters. In this case they are represented as innocent virginal characters due to the white dresses worn by them. The band in the video are represented as ‘rock stars’ to match there style of music as they are all playing instruments, wearing dark colours, have unusual hair cuts and have lots of tattoos. All of these things are stereotypically found in music videos related to this genre of music.

The audience may react in a negative way to this video due to its slightly disturbing storyline and the fact that there is not a great deal of ideology involved with the characters and the lifestyle that is being portrayed. However the fact that there are a lot of close ups of the little girl creates a relationship between her and the audience which intrigues the audience and can once again encourage them to watch the video again and share it with friends which could increase the popularity of the song and band.