Understanding Carole Vernallis's Ideas on Editing in Music Videos

Carole Vernallis, in her book "The Kindest Cut," discusses editing in music videos, focusing on narrative, editing style, camera movement, and framing. She explains how the visual responses to narrative, editing techniques like cutting to the beat, and unique camera angles enhance the viewing experience in music videos. Using Beyonce's "Countdown" as an example, Vernallis's ideas are explored in depth to understand the distinctiveness of editing in music videos.

• Carole Vernallis
• Music Videos
• Editing
• Beyonce
• Narrative

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1. Carole Vernallis and Music Video

2. LQ: Can I write about Carole Vernallis and her ideas about editing in music video ? Lesson Aims To understand the ideas that Carole Vernallis has about editing in music video that makes it a distinct media form To put that understanding onto my research blog To find examples to back up these points in Beyonce s Countdown So first we need to look at Beyonce s Countdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XY3AvVgDns

3. Carole Vernallis Carol Vernallis wrote about music video, and in particular the editing style, in The Kindest Cut in 2001. Overall, her ideas were focussed on 3 key areas: Narrative and Diegesis Editing Camera movement and framing

4. 1. Narrative and Diegesis This part of Vernallis s theory suggests that the video can be in some way a visual response to the narrative - this basically means that the video can tell the story in correlation to the lyrics and music. If there is a narrative/plot, it will generally be slowly revealed to create anticipation and keep the audience s attention. Vernallis then goes on to say that this narrative may not always be completed and that this can create a disjointed, fragmented video which gives it a more interesting appearance. If the narrative is left incomplete it can prompt questions and interest that won t always be answered just in the video. The video will contain repetition throughout and some frames will seem more meaningful because of the way they have been shot/framed EXAMPLE of these 3 features of narrative in Beyonce s Countdown

5. 2. Editing Traditionally, for music videos, the editing is cut to the beat although the prime purpose of the editing is to reflect the properties of the sound. Sometimes camera movement can produce the illusion of an edit where there hasn t been one. A clear convention of editing music videos is that you can break the rules/ conventions of continuity editing. This allows the style of editing to be unique and distinctive to that video. For example, you could see: Edits may be really obvious to draw attention to themselves Jump cuts are often used A master shot (base track) is frequently used to give the video a structure Changes in pace (usually according to rhythm) EXAMPLE of these 4 features of editing in Beyonce s Countdown

6. 3. Camera movement and framing Vernallis states that the singer should mainly be positioned at the front and centre of the frame with one of the most common camera positions being a low angle and to one side. Another common camera feature of a music video is the establishing shot which is frequently used as well as close-up shots. Vernallis has written that frequently the flow of images is too quick for us to properly acknowledge and so therefore we need close-ups to help us focus and provides us with something to remember. The camera may also move in time with the lyrics, to demonstrate the rhythm. EXAMPLE of this sort of framing in Beyonce s Countdown

7. Now write up your notes and add them to your research bog It would be good to illustrate your post with screen grabs rather than write a lot of words !