Performance, Narrative or Conceptual - Which should I do?

Hi

Just a quick thought about the above based on some questions this week

All 3 have their strengths & challenges.

The exam board tend to reward music videos that demonstrate your technical ability & your creativity, as well as understanding of conventions and form.

Performance demonstrates your ability to lip and instrument synch, lighting, choreography, as well as coverage (angles & close ups) and beat editing

...But this is difficult to do well, and requires time, planning, rehearsals and lots of footage (therefore editing time) to look professional.

Narrative demonstrates your ability to in tell a story with a concept based on the themes or mood of the song that you are then associating with the artists (Image)
See pendulum - what theme/story - how much footage (loads!)

...But this can be hardest of all as it requires you to write in effect an entire short film, with characters, drama, meaning, plot development etc which last 3 mins plus with fast paced editing. (linear, non-linear etc). This puts pressure on your choice of a song to inspire a dramatic and interesting story.
 
Conceptual demonstrates your creativity with only the relationship between your concept and the music. It can be animated, surreal, and contain lots of opportunities to use Goodwins theory (voyeurism, intertextuality, hyper-reality, self references).

But this requires structure and for you to have an extremely strong idea, and for you to have a very specific concept that matches the changes & different layers in the song.

To summarise the exam board have suggested elements of Performance & Narrative to give you the opportunity to cut back to the performance if you don't have enough story, and a strong concept to back it up. However if you are confident a good conceptual video is really interesting, clever and can incorporate some performance (baby lip synching teardrop) & narrative.