Thirty Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video

Steve Reiss and Neil Feiman ( Harry. N. Abrams New York, 200)

The music video has to be densely teetered so that it can hold up over repeated viewings. It has to be edgy enough to be noticed, but palatable enough to satisfy the often divergent demands of the performer, the record company and the public.

A plot-driven narrative usually gets boring...knowing that their music videos are meant to be seen repeatedly, most video directors prefer a denser, more abstract style to telling a simple story.

For Jim Faber ( The 100 Top Music Videos, Rolling Stone October 14 1993), " Video directors reprove what good film directors knew all along- that visuals can also be music. When exacted with élan, an edit becomes a back beat, a crane shot a solo, a close up a hook."

Narrative in Music Video's

Heidi Petters says “Narrativity does not seem to be an absolute necessity within the medium of music videos.” Instead she believes that you can create an emotional connection with your band through a series of poetic montages. She goes on to say that 


“The fact that music videos in this sense are primarily poetic does not mean that clips never contain narrativity. Most music videos do develop a storyline, embedded within its poetic structure and some clips even contain introductory story sequences or non-musical narrative sequences inserted within the video number but "outside" its musical score. Narrative in clips becomes a device to structure the poetic clip world and make it more accessible and recognizable to the viewer.” 


Heidi Petters view contradicts with Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia. A Utopia is an ideal place or  any visionary system. A utopia won't represent the public face and the private struggle, but instead present a perfect society.