Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis developed the 'The Kindest Cut' which is the idea that the functions and meaning in a music video are demonstrated within its editing. She compared the editing in music videos with that of Hollywood film and identified a distinction between the two.

Vernallis found that music video have many components that make their editing style distinctive and used to tell narrative in an alternative way:

1. Within music videos there are multiple paths that can be incomplete or obsecure - meaning that not all parts of the stories are shown.
2. Shots can be ordered unconventionally as the narrative is not as linear as that in a film. It is a lot more common to parallel editing between multiple stories rather than complete a scene before moving on to the next. For this reason music videos can be a lot less linear than feature films.
3. Components of the story such as characters, setting and narrative are usually incomplete as only select parts are required to portray the message of the song.
4. Music videos of the pop genre especially can draw away from the narrative to prioritise something else such as the artist or the music.
5. Continuity is created by visual links rather than story, examples include consistent figures, shapes, colours or settings.
6. There are cases where all elements (editing, artist, colour, et cetera) are equal, but others where one is predominant.

Vernallis also proposed that when music videos only show us certain sections of the artist rather than their entirety, they are encouraging the audience to create their own phantasmagonical body for the artist (a body pieced together from little we see and our imagination for the rest). This engages the audience in the music video and also is mainly found with female artists which many would argue is negative as it objectify women. Examples are shown below: