What Is A Music Video - Miss Miller **

A music video is a short film that accompanies an artists song, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. There are numerous of purposes that music videos have for example; give listeners a better understanding of the song, entertain viewers, sell CD's and DVDs to viewers and for marketing purposes. The 3 different styles of music videos are performance, narrative and concept. 

Performance - This type of music video features the artist/band/group performing the song through most, if not all of the video. They could be either singing or dancing etc. 

Narrative - A narrative based music video consists mostly footage that attempts to tell a story through the moving image. This usually includes actors and the story is sometimes linked to the lyrical content. 

Concept - This style of music video is based around a single concept or idea. the video tend to be fairly unusual or make use of a particular editing or filming technique. 

The artist I will be analysing is Lana Del Rey who is an indie-pop artist. The reason why I chose to analyse her video Summertime Sadness, is because I believe the video uses a lot of visuals to help convey a story that also links to some of the lyrical content. 

As the video is mostly a narrative styled based music video, with a couple of performances (singing).The purpose I've gathered from it was that Lana wanted to share a story that could represent a part of her life, this enables the artist to further represent themselves as being normal and relatable to the audience. Furthermore, a reason to why she has a narrative styled music video is to create more of an understanding of herself as an artist and also what the song is about visually. This is because the video is a story which involves Lana mourning the end of a relationship with a woman, this helps build a relationship between the listeners and the artist as well as encourages the audience to buy into her lifestyle. This is conventional to the indie genre, as they usually like to express themselves through stories so that their audiences can relate to them. Also, narrative style based music videos represents the artists as creative because it captures their creativity through the stories being told in the video. 


Moreover the music video includes brief glimpse of Lana's romance during good times,and then cuts into the darker scenes of the relationship for example her lover committing suicide.

Clouds in the beginning 

Another example of how the music video is a narrative styled video,is from the beginning where it opens with a time lapse of clouds moving from 0:00 - 0:15. During this we hear dialogue from a female voice telling her lover" Remember, I'll always love you bye". Then it shows Lana Del Rey singing the opening verse before jumping from a cliff overlooking a waterfall. This foreshadows a glimpse of the narrative of the music video, as it suggests someone close to Lana is leaving. Also, it represents Lana as vulnerable and fearless as she is jumping off a cliff which looks suicidal. This representation of the the artist makes the audience sympathise with her, as she is showing how she feels about her situation and how dangerous it is. This could also represent her as unhappy, due to her risking her life, which her target audience may understand through her music as their generally about love loss, and heartbreak in relationships. The use of the clouds being shown whilst the recording is heard could imply that this person is dead or the end of their relationship. This represents the artist as someone who likes to remember all the things in her life, even the bad things that's happened. This is through the filter used in the clouds that makes them look dark, and could mirror the artist as being dark as well. 

Lana walking toward the camera 

Alongside with the analysis of the summer time sadness video being a narrative styled music video, the music video is shot in a old aged filter throughout. This could convey the artist as being open on sharing a part of her life to the audience, which also lets them understand more about her more as a person rather than an artist. In the screen shot, we see a mid shot of Lana slowly walking towards the camera in front of a large gate.This could also make the video seem more personal to her, and indicate to the audience that she's allowing them in to her story. 

Good times in the relationship

The narrative styled music video shows a short clips of the good times in their relationship. However, also the dark outcome of the relationship. This is evident when we see both women committing suicide and falling through white smoke. This enables the artist to represent herself as unafraid and affectionate as she is jumping with her lover. The white smoke could symbolise the artists innocence and feeling of completeness, especially when she is with her lover. Shows that the artist is devoted when she is in a relationship, and shows how she puts relationships first in her life because she's risking her life for it. Iconography is also used to represent her in this relationship as being toxic for example after falling down the white smoke with her lover we see a red glass fall and shutter in pieces. Red connotes love, passion and danger and the use of this could symbolise how the relationship is broken and it cannot be repaired, representing the artist herself as broken due to her loss in the relationship. 

Beginning of 'National Anthem'

Indie Pop is a genre that is characterised by pop conventions and structure,and a melodic, light hearted sound. The performance side of Indie Pop music videos include live performances from the artist which makes the audience focus on the talent the artists has. This could also be a promotion tool where it enables the artist to showcase themselves and how they are in concert, which draws more audiences in. A performance is not in the summertime sadness video, however in Lana's other music videos there is usually a performance of singing on stage. For example Lana Del Rey's  song 'National Anthem', she sings in front of the 'President' (A$AP Rocky) who plays her husband in the video in the John F Kennedy inspired music video. 

Another convention for Indie Pop is a Narrative used to tell a story by using a sequence of images and videos related to the song;not literal. This enables the audience to understand why it was given a certain narrative and may also help the audience understand the lyrics more in a visual aspect. Due to the development of technology, Directors are able to enhance music videos by making them more interesting with special effects to engage audiences attention. This links into editing where Indie Pop genre music videos often have Filters over the top of clips or the entire video to give a certain idea to the viewer for example in Summertime Sadness this was a memory of Lana's love life in the music video. The music video adapts to the narrative well as there are series of different clips shown of Lana and her lover just being affectionate and doing things in their normal everyday life. Also fast and slow editing is conventional to the Indie Pop genre as it reflects the pace of the music, creating the atmosphere of the music video.

Close Up 

Close up seeing her emotions

Cinematography in Indie Pop includes extreme close ups to introduce the artists, long shots and establishing shots are used to show the setting of the video and sets the character which helps the audience understand the message behind the video, Handheld shots are often used to show a memory and also tilt and pan shots to either move along the scene or cut into another scene. An example of a tilt shot is seen in Summertime sadness music video at 1:18. The use of this shot establishes the artist sharply which engages the audience into the video but also makes her seem shy as it is done very quickly. In addition, close ups are evident in the music video as seen in the screenshots. These are used to convey the artists and the lovers facial expressions e.g the lover is seen looking angry and crying through the close up which emphasises her emotions of not being happy in that moment. The use of this shot follows the convention of the indie genre as it showing the characters emotions and indie songs tend to be quite emotional as artist share in their music whats personal to them. 

Editing in Indie music videos are generally simplistic and used to further showcase the realism in the narrative or concept. In this music video, the editing style, filters are used. We see a sepia filter seen throughout the music video to convey the memories of her relationship and Lana singing. Sepia is an alternative to black and white, and gives a gentle feel to the music video. Also, the use of this sepia filter makes the music video more soft and memorising which conveys that it means something to the artist. The filter makes the video seem more sentimental than having a black and white filter as it shows the warmth in the video, and shows that even though their flashbacks, the artist still cares and mourns of the relationship. Sepia filters are conventional to the indie genre, as they help portray the past in indie music videos as they tend to be about past experiences of the artist. 

Also dialogue is convention to the Indie Pop Genre as music videos which are often used either at the beginning or the end to tell or conclude the story. For example, In Taylor Swifts ' I knew You Were Trouble ' video it begins with her telling the audience what she's learnt from the relationship she was in previously. In the summertime sadness video, dialogue is used in the beginning as mention before ' Remember I'll always love you', this introduces the audience to her story in her music video. Additionally, Diegetic sounds may be used in a Indie Pop music video, if it were to match the lyrics with the actions, but overall non-diegetic is always used for music videos. 

Car Scene 

Mise en scene in Indie music videos are often simplistic. The props, costume and makeup usually link to the scene. An iconography can symbolise or complete a scene as audiences are able to physically see what the character/artist are doing. For example in the summertime sadness video, we see a car used as iconography to convey Lana and her lover are in a car. This gives a sense of realism in the audience which is conventional to the indie genre, as artists usually showcase real life events so that they are relatable.The setting for Indie Pop music videos are known to be in studios, cities, parks, woods etc. These settings create a sense of realism as they're real locations where audiences can relate to the characters/artist or to create mysteries which makes them focus more on the performance. This is evident in the summertime sadness numerous of times as we see Lana in many different locations such as a house, forest and a bridge. These different locations are used to convey different parts of her life. This makes her allow her audience in which intrigues them to further listen and watch her music videos to find out more about her as a person as they see her in different locations. 

The music video 'Summertime sadness' appeals to a particular type of audience who are interested in visual understandings of particular songs and why they're made the way they are. Also, because of the narrative told in the music video, this could appeal to those that prefer visuals rather than just audios alone. Also the story told interests the audience but also informs them the realisation of relationships especially in young relationships. The target audience for her music video is for Indie or Sad core lovers who are aged between 18 - 28 years of the female sex as most females can relate to the video because its about love, tough break ups and shows how women deal with them badly. To conclude, the music video is creative, unique from 'normal' music videos as it gets the audience thinking and allows them to interpret it their own way. 

What I've learnt from analysing this video is the deeper meanings and reasons why indie artists, especially Lana Del Rey include certain things in their music videos. Also, I have gathered and developed more knowledge on the Indie Pop Genre and have learnt the conventions that are often used in music videos. Furthermore, due to Indie music being expressive, artists use music videos to help express further their songs to let audiences into their lifestyle or give more understanding of the lyrical content visually. I think music videos are very effective as they allow artists to express themselves visually which intrigues and draws more attention from audiences but also are used as a marketing tool which is beneficial to the artists and their label. The type of style and genre I consider creating for my music video is Indie Pop with a narrative styled music video because I believe this is the style that intrigues audiences more and helps create closer relationships with the artists and their audience.