Narrative Music Videos

A Narrative Music Video tells a story visually which may reflect a story/theme within the song or a narrative may show a completely different interpretation or narrative to the lyrics within the song. The narrative constructed within the music video may include the performer either playing themselves or a character they have created, sometimes narrative videos do not feature the artist at all and the story is told by actors. A 'pure' narrative video will have no lip synching within the video, it will purely be story telling, the most common form of narrative video is combined with performance music videos to show the artist or an actor lip syncing with the words of the song.

Narrative videos are constructed in the same nature as a short film and often mimic a film genre. Towards the beginning of the music video an enigma may be introduced to make the audience ask questions such as who are they? what are they doing? The restricted narrative keeps the audience asking questions until there is a resolution which is usually the end of the video, a producer will use enigma codes to keep the audience interested and taking an interest in the video as well as the song.

The promotion surrounding narrative music videos can sometimes have similarities to the marketing of a film. for example Taylor Swift's Bad Blood music video featured stars such as Cara Delevingne and Selena Gomez, within the two weeks leading up to the release of the Music Video, Taylor Swift posted images of movie-style posters announcing the actresses featuring within the video.

 

Enrique Iglesias' music video for 'Hero' is a narrative video which featured Enrique a told a story involving him and one other person, the video shows many different shots including Enrique Lip Syncing to the lyrics of his song. In contrast to this video, Rudimental's 'Waiting All Night' music video features a narrative which is not related to the theme of the song itself. Entique's linked to the lyrics of the song because it is about sacrifice whilst Rudimental's is just a video which is motivational and accompanies the video well.

Hero (related narrative):

Waiting All Night (unrelated narrative):