History of music videos - Miss Georgiou

What is a music video - Miss Miller

A music video is a 'short film that intergrates a song and the use of imagery into it, produced for promotional and/or artistic purposes'. The video helps to tell a story or deliver a message, and helps to embrace the audience and grab their attention whilst giving meaning to the lyrics of a song.

The Music video I analysed is called 'If I Die Young' by The Band Perry -

The purpose of this music video is to grab the audiences attention in a very subtle way. This song is by an American country artist called 'The Band Perry', and some of the conventions of country music are;

• Showing an acoustic guitar 
• Featuring the artist mixed in with a narrative
• Very strong narrative
• Very stereotypical locations such as rural areas
• Artists vocals
• Common theme of love, heartbreak or loss

This music video follows the conventions of a typical country song, for example by being about love and loss. The lyrics of this song are very emotional and write a story on their own, the video simply emphasizes this meaning to make it clearer. The lyric ''The sharp knife of a short life'' is talking about what happens when life is tragically cut short. The song in my opinion is therefore trying to promote the idea that life is short and you should take the most out of it whilst you can. It also helps to promote hope, that thing can and will get better. For example, the song helped a young girl who had lost her best friend to cancer and was feeling suicidal, and this song gave her hope to carry on living.

Another convention this video follows is the iconography of the acoustic guitar. The video shows a strong narrative with the main character being the artist singing, which is also typical to country music. By showing the instruments, it helps firstly to promote the band and its members for publicity reasons, and secondly helps to show the realism of the situation, and how anyone can 'die young'.

Another convention the video followed was the location it was filmed in. Country music is associated with the countryside and so it would make sense to film it in rural areas. For example, the very first shot is a close up of the main artists face, showing the iconography of the pink flower clip. This suits the style of music and sets the song up to be very naturalistic. This shot is panned into, panning downwards onto her face, giving the impression that she has come from above, which again goes with the theme of the song how she will be with God. 

As you can see in the images below, the location is set in a very rural old fashioned area which looks very peaceful, which adds to the idea of the paradise you go to when you die. Also, there is a lake, as shown through the girl in the canoe and this again emphasizes the lyrics and the rural area. 

All of these conventions helped to show a very stereotypical country music video. The deep, meaningful narrative and micro-elements used to show this all fitted with the lyrics and it is very clear of the story that is being portrayed. 

The last shot used to end the video is a close-up of the book the girl was holding in the book, opened up on a specific page showing Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem 'Lady of Shallot'. This gives the idea of the link between the music videos narrative and the lady of shallot poem, specifically the mimicked idea of the artist floating down the river to better things perhaps heaven, as referenced in the poem as '...floats down the river to Camelot'.