What Is a Music Video?

Music videos are made to promote an artist and give the audience more information on the artist, this can lead to profit and raise sales in their music. An example of this is the single 'love the way you lie' it was in the charts for 3weeks in the top ten but once the video had come out it went straight to number one. There are 3 different areas in music videos narrative, performance and concept. Performance would be the artist singing or dancing, while narrative would be them telling a story sometimes showing the meaning to the lyrics, concept is a meaning or though that is shown though out the video. Narrative and performance are both used in this video with the hurtful love shown between the actor as well as the rapping and visual affects. 

The music video for ‘Love the way you lie’ by Eminem was one of the most watched music videos with 160,000,000 view just in 2011, it also had the most views within 24 hours on Vevo. The video stars Megan Fox and Dominic Monagham in a love-hate relationship, also including Rihanna singing the chorus by including a global superstar like Rihanna a new rang of people will be buy and viewing the videos because of Eminem and her having such different types of fans this made the video widely popular. From this the purpose of this music video was to promote the single and its origin, aiming to show the brutality of a relationship, with events of the house burning and violence. Other ways of promoting the video was Megan Fox giving her video proceedings to a womans shelter with this making new making the video ever so popular. With this being a rap/pop video the target audience is wide so they have to get most people interest that is why they have made it high budget but also look more relatable to the normal life style. 

The style of this music video was fast cutting with no product placement with this, it was also high budget with many different scenes. By having A star actors within the video making it more appealing. The setting is in a deteriorating house showing him to be an urban artist also reflecting on the relationship between the characters, this also reflects on the artist image with him wanting not to seem like a pop star and more urban so that he still keeps his fans interested. 

The genre of this music video is rap, rap is normally surrounded by advertisement e.g. Dr. Dre, this music video breaks the convention by having no product placement by doing this it shows that he has enough money to be able to do this or he’s going alone. This idea is backed up by him having an A listed actors to be in his video and having Rihanna who is a worldwide artist. A normal rap video would have beautiful woman dancing around as well as expensive cars and the look of a riche life style. This video has broke the conventions by having it more about the words and the meaning. This is his way of making his video look deep and meaningful instead of shallow. The target audience maybe argued pop with Rihanna and the meaning behind it. A rap video wouldn't normally have high budget on special affects with the use of fire surrounding the actors and burning down a house. Even though this video is mainly rap it is also pop for a pop video they have used violence which is not conventional because it is not wanted from parents for their children to watch. It is also not glamourise is anyway, which in a pop video or rap video they would make a vision of the high life giving the audience an insight on the high life, this has been done so that the audience can connect to the artist and the song more, making it seem like a more life like situation.

From this music video I have seen what things what makes a good music video, but also what makes it appealing to the audience, with it having good looking woman, danger and a story. If I could I would have high paid actors but this can't happen and also I would use high special affects. I think the main thing to have is something the audience can relate to, this will keep them watching and interested. Also I will aim to plan to shock the audience within my video so that they will leave with a though in their head. This has helped me plan many ideas and guided me on what are the main aspects of a music video.