What Makes An Effective Music Video?

Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag
This song is a cliche story about teenage romance in high school. It tells the story of a 'nerd' who's in love with more popular girl. The video backs this up with its layout by using the lyrics in line with the video to show the different parts of the song. It also reverts to filming of the band in the same environment (Hight school) which again relates to the lyrics and the story of the song.

This shot is at the beginning of the music video and shows the 'nerd' looking lovingly at the more popular girl getting out of her boyfriend's car at school. The clothing used represents the differences between them the way the girl is dressed in nicer clothes and by the way she looks. She is shown to be too good for the 'nerd'.

The video also uses shots of the band throughout the video. This shows the performance of the song and also shows the style of the band and what they represent. The shot used is in a high school gym which relates perfectly to the song and the area the lyrics are based around. This links the band to the video and their style and what they represent as a band and through that particular song.








The video reverts between the band and the story the whole way though. Each part of the video is used to represent the lyrics at each point. This is effective because it helps the audience keep up with what the song is about and also gets the message through to people a lot quicker and easier. This helps people to understand the song and gives them a better idea of what the band is all about.

During the chorus, the focus goes back to the band. However at this point there are crowds of teenagers around the band all going crazy. This part of the video is used to represent the band and also the audience. It fits in with the cliches of teenagers and gives the song a lot of energy, making the song exciting and shows off the sort of audience that this music has.





I think that this video is a good representative of this genre because it tells a story of cliche teenage behaviour and also explains it through the lyrics and music video. The performance of the band is also shown in the video which represents the style of the band and allows audiences to relate the genre of music to a particular style. The location used is also very well planned out as the audience of this music is predominantly teenagers which are also likely to be high school students themselves. I think that this video is a good choice to represent the genre of my choice because if this because it is also a song that relates well to my childhood as I grew up listening to this sort of music and this song in particular was a part of it.
I think this video stands out from other music videos because it represents the audience of the music as well as the band itself. However, looking at other music videos from this genre, there is a trend throughout which shows that the bands from this genre represent their audience a lot through their videos and also give off different impressions from their style and behaviour in their music videos. So although the videos are very similar, they are also very different.