Research for Music video: Summary of Carol Varnallis's theory

Carol Varnallis has studied the way editing and camerawork has been used in music videos.

She is her observations summarised:

·         The music videos has ‘continuity’ editing meaning the screen keeps moving, not many still shots and everything seeming busy.

·         Editing effects used such as split screens, wipes, fades and many more to draw more attention.

·         The main cuts that are used are mostly jump cuts.

·         There is at least one base track in a music video.

·         The camera and editing moves and editing in time with the music.

A great example of a music video that I believe that suits this observation is Example’s music video of Kickstarts.

You can see at the beginning of the video his name is editing bouncing according to the beat of the music.

On the 14^th second of the music video the split screens are edited disappearing.

Another great example of the editing in the music video is at 1:19 when the singer says “down” the shot is being brought down according to the beat of the music making a new shot being shown on screen.

Example - Kickstarts from Stephen Richards on Vimeo.