Video and storytelling in a digital world: interactions and narratives in videoclips

Abstract

This paper presents a study about narratives in music videos. It discusses the arrangements of audio-visual languages from settings established by characteristics of the media, emphasizing the role of platforms for the diffusion of information and entertainment such as YouTube. It highlights a dialogue within cinema’s own language and shows that, in contemporary scenarios, music videos actually tell stories. It is argued that contemporary music videos, in great majority, increase the duration of music, with pauses, performances of characters, insertion of dialogues and other structuring elements that are not typical of the classic and conventional paradigms of a language. For our purposes, the objects of this study are the music videos of Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan. The theoretical foundation is established through authors involved in debates around a culture of convergence, transmedia storytelling and interactions among the audio-visual languages.