Lyric videos: the meeting of the music video with graphic design and the typographic composition

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is the analysis of the lyric video in order to define the format as a commercial audiovisual creation, to describe the use of formal resources related to the use of the text and, in a second step, to make a classification of the lyric videos in function of the variables considered in the analysis methodology. The lyric video is a subgenre within the music video that represents, through textual codes, the entire verbal content of a song, usually synchronized with that one. Even as a very economical production format in terms of budgets, lyric video has become a popular phenomenon thanks to its distribution through YouTube and other online video platforms. To achieve the proposed objectives, we will conduct a content analysis in a sample of lyric videos, based on a methodology based on the proposals of various authors that address the relationship of audiovisual discourse with textual codes and graphic design. The results of our analysis highlight the graphic and digital nature of the format, in which the recorded film image is rarely used as a formal resource prior to editing. In the same way, the written texts would appear integrated in the discourse in an extradiegetic way and would alternate various typographical sources, usually in movement, in order to achieve a high dynamism and thus seduce the viewer.