Carol Vernallis "The Kindest cut: Functions and meaning in music video editing"

Carol Vernallis analysed how editing in music videos and Hollywood films differenciate and was able to identify distinct approaches to each of them. The table below shows a summary of what the theory covers:

Here is a quote of which Vernallis said:

"In video our attention to the song shapes the way we percieve the image, but to an equal extent what we attend to in the image helps to determine how we hear the music."

In this quote, Vernallis is saying how by hearing the music we can almost build up an imaginary image of how we would percieve the meaning of the image and same as the video helps to build up the communication of the song.

When trying to find examples to go with the text found in the table I found one which could potentially cover the majority of them. This video is 'End Of Time' by Beyonce. When watching this video look out for how there is no clear path or narrative to this music video as the video itself is a collection of her concerts put together to create one big performance. There is no sense of continuity as the costumes of our main singer (seen as the dominant focus in the video) continuously changes costume and location by the use of cutting from one to another. The time, space, character and narrative are revealed but not in the sense where it makes us completely focus on them as the editing is continuously taking us from one place to another, one costume to another, one time to another.



In addition to this when thinking about 'Visual hooks' a very clear representation of this is the music video that I earlier analysed 'Domino' by Jessie J. The use of the background constantly changing draws the audience in a large amount as it's animated and you're eyes are drawn straight to it. In addition to this, the editing and cinematography used helps with creating pace and interesting shots which in turn helps keeping you hooked throughout the whole of the music video.



Another thing that Vernallis said was that shots of singers will encourage the audience to piece together what we think the artist looks like, a 'Phantasmagorical Body' (a body of which is made up in our mind of all the shots of bits of bodies we see). An excellent example of where we see this happening is at the start of 'Unfaithful' by Rihanna.

The pictures in action: