Research for Music Video: Carole Vernali's theory

Carole Vernallis studied editing and camerawork closely in music videos. She observed that edits formed in music video were much more frequently than the edits in film. This gave her the impression that many stood out more as disjunction and that the editing seems to have a rhythmic basis closely connected to the song. In the specification for A2 media it states “using sound with images and editing appropriately” in other words having a clear rhythm editing pattern is one of the factors that makes a good music video.
She made many observations, and I will discuss some of them here. She believes that jump cuts are often used in which two particular shots may not directly flow for example, someone turning on the shower and then the subsequent shot would be them already in the shower, We wouldn’t see the transformation from where the tap is being turned on and to when the person is already in the shower. Another of her ideas was a master shot (base track) which are frequently used to give the video a structure. In addition the camera may move in time with the music, obvious edits such as special effects or wipes and the rule of continuity may be broken to draw more attention to what is on the screen.

Examples which illustrate some of her ideas



Jump cut - From 1.45 there are 10 jump cuts in the space of less than 5 seconds. Through editing we see the camera switching the shot from the Mar Ransons face to and from his point of view of the front lights on the bike. The jump cuts have been edited so that they flow with the beat which I believe is a very effective way of catching the audience’s attention.

Special Effects Added : Initially at the beginning a little girl to which the artist has used to resemble her for the opening of the music video as the little girl sits crossed legged then gets up to walk around the big teddy bear situated in the middle of the scene then the young girl gradually turns into the artist, Jessie J as she walks around to the other side of the teddy bear. The video on a whole may seem ‘animated’, due to the use of props and mise-en-scene

Base Track - All the way through the beginning of the music video the base track, the flashing lights and the woman hammering on the drums matched. I believe this has allowed the music video to have a good structure and it flowed quite nicely. The most interesting part was when you could actually hear the transformation of  the number 32 transformed as crackling ice from beneath the ground