Carol Vernallis

 CAROL VERNALLIS - THE KINDEST CUT

Carol Vernallis analysed editing in music videos and Hollywood film and identified the distinct approaches to each. She came up with her theory The Kindest Cut where she puts music videos against Hollywood film and points out the differences between each.

Music videos tend to have lots of different narrative strands which are sometimes in complete unlike Hollywood film which has one single clear path (narrative) through the film's world. A film has a clear structure of beginning, middle and end where as Music Videos do not. For Example Foo Fighters tend to have music videos that follow lots of different narratives rather than one clear narrative 

Example:
 
 Music Videos are also compared to Hollywood film very unconventional the shots shift more freely, there is no specific order of shots. Where as in a Hollywood film the shots are conventional and would have a specific order for example an establishing shot followed by a long shot of the main character where as in a Music Video the there could a close up of the main artist followed by an establishing shot. 
In music videos the time space, character and narrative are revealed incompletely, you don't really find out who the characters are, what the narrative is or what time it is. However in a Hollywood film there is a unity of time and space you will always know who the character is, what the narrative is and what the time is and how much time has passed between shots.
There is discontinuity within music videos as they are usually edited using montage editing so that the shots do not need to show continuity editing where as a Hollywood film uses continuity editing in order to draw us into the narrative.
Music videos also sometime use visual hooks in order to create continuity. Also sometimes all elements are equal, sometimes one element is dominant and others subordinate.

Carol Vernallis also said that, shots of the artist will encourage us to piece together a Phantasmagorical body (a body made up in our mind of all shots of bits of bodies we see) 
 So in theory when we watch a music video that shows of bits of the body of the main artist before we actually see the whole artists body we are putting together a Phantasmagorical body of the artist in our mind we are trying to create an image of what the artist looks like before we see the artist. This is most common in female pop music videos. For Example     

Lady Gaga - Telephone 
In the music video for Lady Gaga's song Telephone you see multiple close-ups and medium shots of her before you see her whole body 

As seen in the video above in the first verse and chorus of the song you see multiple shots of close ups of her face, legs and other bits of her bodies before you see a shot of her whole body and when you do see her whole body before it's small brief shots of her whole body. This makes the audience build up a Phantasmagorical body of Lady Gaga, we picture in our heads what her whole body looks like before we see her, she's made to appear as an almost sex object rather than a woman.