Typologies

PERFORMANCE VIDEOS

The most common type (Firth 1988) feature the star or the group singing in concept to wildly enthusiastic fans, the goal is to convey a sense of the inconcert experience.
Gow (1992) suggests 'the predominance of the performance indicates that a music video defines itself chiefly by images of artists ainging and playing songs.
Perofrmance videos - especially those hat display the star or group in the studio - remind the viewer that the soundtrack is still important.
Performance oriented visuals cut viewers that the recording of the music is the most significant element.

An example of a performance stlye video is 'Little lion man' by Mumford and sons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E

NARRATIVE VIDEOS

Present a sequence of events, a video may tell any kind of story in linear, cause effect sequencing.

Love stories, however, are the most common narrative mode in music videos. The narrative pattern is one of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.

Action in the story is dominated by males who do things and females who passively react or wait for something to happen. (Schwichtenberg 1992)

An example of a narrative video is 'You belong with my' by Taylor Swift. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu7Ukg0666w

CONCEPTUAL VIDEOS

These rely on poetic form, primarily a metaphoe. Conceptual videos do not tell a story in linear fashion, but rather create a mood, a feelin to be evoked in the experience of viewing (Firth 988)

Conceptual videos contain the possibility for multiple meanings as the metaphor in interuppted by the viewer. 'the metaphorical relationship between the images are structured according to sounds, musical and viual rhymes and rhythms, which play a suggestive role for viewers/listeners' (Schwichtenberg 1992)

An example of a conceptual video is 'Ready for the weekend' by Calvin Harris. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO4msvIA7cw&ob=av2e

A given music video may actually have elements of more than one category (for example 'Ruby' by Kaiser Chiefs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qObzgUfCl28)

Interest and excitement is stimulated by rapid cutting, intercutting, dissolves, jump cuts, superimpositions and other special effects that taken together with different scenes and characters, make music videos visually and thematically dynamic.