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conclusion

This essay is intended only to scratch the surface of the subject of the relationships between music video and the use of pop music in film. I have mentioned some filming techniques (use of subtitles, performance films, visual narrative etc.) but there are many more that need exploring. Bjornberg's second classification of musical/visual construction is epic visual with epic musical constructions, in which visual aspects of the promo clip are repeated as well as musical elements. I have chosen not to mention this category since these are mostly "art" videos, whose techniques owe more to technical film techniques (cutting, editing, camera angles, special effects, processing techniques etc.) and tend to be abstract rather than aiming towards a narrative goal (as most films do).

It is obvious (I hope) from some of the examples used, that pop video and film are undeniably linked. Pop video has certainly become more sophisticated in recent years with the advent of computer animation (most Virtual Reality videos are "epic" in construction because of the costly nature of the technology, and perhaps to visualise the repetitiveness of the music they represent) and other processing technologies. The promo clip for Garbage's Stupid Girl (1996) was applied the same processing techniques as the opening title sequence of the film Seven (Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman, also 1996). In turn, film is beginning to learn from pop video. Films such as Trainspotting and Philadelphia are very similar to pop videos in places - Philadelphia was directed by Jonathan Demme, who was a video director in the 1980s, and Alien3 (1992) was directed by David Fincher, another pop video director. Alien3 is an interesting film in its use of extreme close ups, slow motion filming, quick bursts of images and very fast cutting and scene changing. The opening title sequence alone is very similar to pop videos in its use of close-up, fast cutting between images, bursts of visuals (and sound in this case) etc. There is no doubt that pop video is an artform, an artform that is recognised at the MTV Video Music Awards every year, with an award for Best Direction. As more pop video directors make films, and vice versa (Twin Peaks' David Lynch directed the promo for Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy in 1991), the worlds of film and pop video will become even more integrated, resulting in a more sophisticated developments of both.

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