Performance-based videos have their place; they let fans see what the performer or band looks like, acts like. You get to see the personality of the performer or band. For followers, it can act as a record of gigs they have seen. However, bands sometimes like to project themselves a little; they want to show off their personality or interests in interesting or non-literal ways outside of a normal performance. Adding narrative or non-narrative elements to a video helps bands feel more expressive. Below are some examples of where a more conventional performance music video tried to put in some non-conventional elements.
Flying Kangaroo Alliance ‘Sex is Your Religion’
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FKA “Sex Is Your Religion” (Mixed Concept/Performance Video) |
This music video is really ‘just’ a standard performance-based music video – but with a few extraneous shots thrown in which are inspired by the lyrics. It is not trying to pretend to be anything genuinely narrative or abstract – it just throws in these shots for variety, and they advance the themes of the song’s lyrics. The main idea is – what can be done during a normal performance music video shoot that adds extra to the finished video? |
This was done on a tight budget. There was no money to hire additional studio time and additional people, costumes, props, etc. This is just the band and whatever they could grab from home and from friends. If you want an idea of what, with a bigger budget, we should have done, then look to shots from the music video for Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’:
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This is music video that whilst has a basis in performance – lead singer Midge Ure is always seen miming, singing the lyrics of the song. The other band members are seen playing their instruments, albeit briefly and in heightened circumstances – like keyboard player Billie Currie sat at a grand piano in an Opera House. The rest of the video contains narrative and abstract ideas for shots. We’re in Vienna – what’s are cliches for Vienna? (And the motivation for the song?) Art, intrigue, decadence, opulence, etc. Actually, half the video is shot in London, but another half was shot during a short trip to Vienna. In both locations, the music video makers film statues, state buildings, museum fronts and graves yards. There is a minor narrative element which sees a young man and woman, who appear to be lovers, but she is married to a wealthy older man. But even this is rendered enigmatic – the first time we see the woman, she is hurrying down an empty street. Empty, apart from a white horse.
In relation to the ‘Sex Is Your Religion’, shots from ‘Vienna’ worth noting were the party scenes. These were filmed in Vienna, show the band joining a party where the members like to dress up – think of this as ’80s-style cos-play – as turn-of-the-century, ‘fin de siècle’, upper class decadents. Think of the kind of people taking part in the orgies in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’. These add shots that compliment the lyrics to ‘Vienna’. These scenes could have been cut into the music video for ‘Sex Is Your Religion’.
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For most of the music video ‘Sex Is Your Religion’ it is a normal performance-based music video. The shots above are taken from those sections: the band performs, mimes their performance to playback and multiple cameras record them.
The other parts of the video, examples below, then have moments where the band members, mainly the lead singer, are seen dressed up in more sexualised costumes, wearing masks, praying, etc.
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This music video may not be anywhere as ambitious as ‘Vienna’, but on a low budget, it is a way of trying to make things more visually interesting. One advantage is – that you’re filming all this footage, so why not have a performance based music video as well? There are two music videos for this song; one is a straight performance-based music video, and the other has performance-based sequences inter-cut with the more abstract shots of the band dressing up, dancing, praying, etc. In this way – a band can have it both ways and hopefully getting fans to view both videos and appreciate the song more.
Free Control ‘Strawman’
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Free Control “Strawman” (Studio filmed) |
This isn’t really a music video with much abstract or narrative imagery worked in. It is, at heart, a performance-based music video. However, taking advantage of the location – at the suggestion of the lead singer Sally Hossack – all the mirrors and reflective surfaces (glass viewing panels between different rooms within the recording studio) had additional imagery composited into them. |
This allowed us to see band members in positions we wouldn’t normally see them. You can watch the video and not notice that these surfaces are reflecting people you can’t see form these positions, or whose reflections don’t match the people in front of the mirror:
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Mainly, as shown below, the use of the mirror and other surfaces was used to bring Orson Welles into the music video, because a sample of his observations from a 1955 episode of the BBC ‘Orson Welles’ Sketch Book’ was used in the song.
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Flying Kangaroo Alliance ‘Hit The Wall Again’
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FKA “Hit The Wall” (Mixed Narrative/Performance Video) |
This music video contains more of a narrative strand than ‘Sex Is Your Religion’, but again this is limited due to filming on a low budget and trying to keep filming time down to a minimum. |
As with ‘Sex Is Your Religion’, at least half the video is a normal performance-based music video:
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These are then inter-cut with shots and short sequences inspired by the song lyrics:
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These shots and sequences build a very slender narrative: we see a woman waking up or recovering from a series of domestic assaults, finally resulting in arming herself with a knife in preparation for the next time. No one is going to pretend this is ground-breaking. The aim is: what can be done in a day (or two at most) and on a tight budget? We can film the performance within a day (and that can be a separate music video). The other sequences – they also need to be done in a day, and if you need them properly lit, filmed and have a make-up artist do the cuts and bruises – then what you see filmed takes a day. There could have been more dramatic/melodramatic footage. Maybe we could have filmed an actual beating, showing blood being spilt – possibly hoping for it to trend on YouTube for that reason. However, due to the way the lyrics are being interpreted, the decision is to keep it low-key. Filming a “beating” with the appropriate care and attention (make up, making sure no one actually gets hurt, etc) is probably going to be a day in itself. The narrative may lack incident, but it doesn’t derail the music video as a whole and still allows the viewer to concentrate on the song – which is what the band were more concerned about.