Sven E Carlsson's Music Video Theory

Sven E Carlsson’s theory states that binary opposites drive a music video forward (e.g. Black and White theme)

He also believes that there are two main categories which music videos fall into, which is performance and conceptual.

Performance Based Video:

A performance based video consists of the artist mainly singing and dancing, and they can be three types of performance:

·         Song performance

·         Dance performance

·         Instrumental performance

The Performer:

Carlsson believes the performer of the music video is usually made into a ‘commercial exhibitionist’, which means the performer is made into a selling item. Which could mean they are someone fans aspire to be and therefore, the scenes of them in the music video will be of a high quality.

The other type that Carlsson believes can exist is a ‘televised bard’, which is a singing storyteller who uses on screen images instead of inner, more personal images.

The final type is the ‘electronic shaman’, and more often than not the shaman is invisible and you can only hear their voice, which is used to anchor their voice.

Conceptual Music Video:

This is where the audience watch something beyond the artist, which aims to have artistic ambitions.