Music Video as Digital Cinema

It was not until after the 1980s when the concept of music video promoting the music was fully exploited, entering a new aesthetic era. Despite MTV funding to create bigger production music videos, DIY and artistic videos continued to be produced, which created a tension among experimental videos and performative videos. Early music videos, such as “Bohemian Rapsody” tended to blend authenticity with experimentation, having more narrative freedom than cinema or television.

Video hosting and sharing sites, such as YouTube appeared, they changed the way videos were produced, along with artists rejecting their approach to low-tech minimalism of various kinds after MTV’s techniques, such as special effect, rapid editing and high budget set and costumes. The reflexivity of music videos is what makes it post-cinematic specifically. Although the concepts are reversed, as Nicholas Cook once told, “one medium can fill in the gap of another’s” (Vernallis, 2013), and examining Michel Chion’s concept of “added value, wherein the image seems to absorb or take on the attributes of the music” (Vernallis, 2013), these concepts can also be applied in music videos. The editing patterns were also affected by evolved technologies, hours of recordings mixed in new forms, which adds on to the element of digital cinema.

Examining the music video of “Maniac”, (Viviz, 2023), it not only contains performance elements which highlights the music, but also has narrative. Although it is simple, there is a continuing storyline throughout the video, which gives the cinematic element to the video. Developed camera techniques used during 2:23-2:38 of the video makes the audience focus on the music more, along with the extremely rapid editing used in 0:17 to 0:22 to match the beat and image. Along with these elements, highly budgeted and created sets, props and costumes along with the choreography and music, it adds on to the elements of digital cinema.