Research: What is the function of a music video?

Function of Music video

The function of a music video is mainly to promote the artist whilst making money for record label. Dubstep is one genre that promoting an artist isn’t the priority. In dubstep videos are mainly used for entertaining the audience as most of the time the artist isn’t featured. One other function of a music video is to give an insight into the artist life; we get a sense of their emotions and about what they feel about life or a particular situation.   This is shown visually and when we hear the song. Another function of a music video is to represent the artist in a particular way. An example of this is Lily Allen’s Hard Out Here (Explicit Content). 

In this video she’s representing the body image pressures and misogyny in the entertainment industry. Lily is both the participant and narrator in the video so we know what it’s like for a woman in the entertainment industry. She is the main focus of the video as she is using herself as an example of how she is pressured into looking and acting a particular way for attention. We see Lily sing most of the time in the video, with several base tracks or of product placement or slow motion shots.

Throughout the video there are several jump cuts to show explicit content of half-naked women dancing provocative, or of Lily performing. The use of this is to attract a male audience who wouldn’t normally listen to her music and to keep the audience attention so they constantly see something different to look at regardless of the video. I think this is effective because it keeps you engaged regardless of how controversial it might be. Seeing quick jump cuts makes it more entertaining so you get a brief understanding of what’s going on then it chops and changes quickly so you won’t be more and makes you want to watch it more and more. The use of slow motion and obvious edits is useful to make the more important things that the audience wants to see more appealing to see. What makes it more effective is when one of the dances starts twerking during the chorus (1:41). Its first at normal speed, it then slows down completely and then resumes to normal pace. 

I feel that this is an great example of a music video because the use of camera work and special effects. They present everything that Lily is saying with the repetition of close ups of significant parts of the female body. The pace of the editing suits the song as is it not an fast track which enables the audience to have a better understanding of what is going on without having any fast chopping and changing of cuts. The use of lighting in some of the locations make it seem as if it's a strip club with the flashing lights.