Research: Performance Music Video

Although there are various different styles of music video, they usually all share purposes:

• Music videos promote a single. If more people are interested in watching a video, this would also advertise the song to them and, possibly, an entire album.
• The music videos also promotes the artist or band. Especially if the artist is particularly new or unknown, music videos help in making the artist's face and music more well-known.
• Depending upon the style of music video, it also helps to create, adapt and feed into the artists 'star image'. For example, if an artist wanted to be perceived as quite a 'bad boy' character, they will have quite a hardcore music video to showcase themselves. For example, they may use much darker colours or show the artist doing things they shouldn't be - perhaps breaking the law or being aggressive towards somebody else. 
• Music videos also help to entertain the audience. Some people may not be interested by the concept of just listening to a song, but the visual aid of a music video would make the song more popular to people who would prefer to watch a video. 

The typical music video would last between 3 and 4 minutes, and would combine a mix of life performance, narrative and other visual imagery including computer graphics and animation. Consequently, this helps to advertise the band/artist as well as the song. 

Primarily, there are three main categories for music videos.

Performance

In many music videos, the artists are seen performing the song as part of it. This is the most traditional type of music video since they originally developed from compiling clips of performances. An example of a performance video would be Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer from 1986. 

This video follows many of the conventions of a performance video. For example, the video often contains many shots of the artist performing. This means that the audience can make a connection between who is singing in the video and the song, meaning that they come to learn who the artist is.

This particular example of performance music video involves a live stage performance, something that is very common in this genre of video. It has shots of both the artist singing and the audience joining in with them, showing that the artist is very popular, successful and good at entertaining a crowd.

You also see Bon Jovi in a "real life" situation where they are talking and warming up with each other. Only half of the actual music video involves them performing to an actual audience. During the other half, they are rehearsing together and warming up.

Additionally, there is a particular visual style that matches the artist. The mise-en-scene of the video is made up mainly of red, orange and black colours, including the artist's stage lighting and costume. These colours adhere to the rock genre and so help to convey the artist's image and style to the audience of the video.





Overall, Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer is clearly a performance music video as it follows almost every code and convention. Many of Bon Jovi's music videos originate from the same genre and so, this exemplifies the 'star image' that this artist endeavoured to achieve.