Carol Vernallis - The kindest cut

 Carol Vernallis' theory revolves around four different concepts, being narrative, diegesis, camera movement and framing and editing.

Narrative

Vernallis states that a music video is the visual response to a song and its lyrics and therefore the video should support the lyrical meaning along with the music. However, the artist should still remain consistently present. This is to allow the audience to feel closer to the artist, along with identify with the music, this in theory leads to the artist gaining support from new fans. Music videos can, but are not limited to being balanced between narrative and performance, the video can be mostly performance or narrative and still convey a strong meaning whilst appealing to the audience. Vernallis goes on to state that continuity isn't as important in music videos and the narratives may often feel fragmented or unfinished; this is because the focus of the audience should still be on the song and if the narrative followed all basic rules of film production the viewer would lose focus on the song itself.

Diegesis

Diegesis is the conceptual "world" inside of the music video, it is usually revealed slowly and through repetition  to build a narrative over time. Whilst viewing this "world" there is often a theme, a message and a protagonist attempting to convey said message. For example in the song This is war by thirty seconds to mars, the theme is war and the protagonist is portrayed by the singer as a soldier attempting to convey the message being to stop war. Character or object movement may move along to the same pace as the music. There will also often be gaps in time and space.

Camera movement and framing

Extreme closeups and longshots are common in music videos, the camera may move in time with the music just like the edits the further engage the audience and to draw as much attention the artist as possible in attempts to gain listeners/fans.

Editing

Vernallis states that the editing in a music video will often contain cuts along to the beat/instruments of the music, she also states that music videos often disregard the rules of continuity editing, when we see cuts/ transitions they will often be obvious in comparison the continuity editings rule of attempting to make it as realistic as possible