RESEARCH: Vernallis's Theory

Carol Vernallis studied editing and camera work closely in music videos. She realised that edits in music videos are much more frequent than in film. She noticed that many stand out as disjuncture and that the editing in music videos seem to have a rhythmic basis closely connected to the song.

Her findings are as follows:

• What she had realised was that continuity was not an issue in music videos; the rules of continuity were not applied in music videos as broken shots of editing is used to draw attention to what is on screen. 

• Edits such as wipes and special effects were used in an obvious manner. This is because it draws attention to the music video itself as such obvious editing is not seen in film.

• Jump cuts are often used and continually used. This is turn rules out the possibility of continuity as jump cuts jump from one scene to another often. This can relate to disjuncture as one shot can vary from another in jump cuts making no sense or relation to the song. 

• A master shot (also known as a base track) is frequently used in order to give the video some structure. A base track allows the editor to cut away back to this shot many times in order to make the video have some structure. This does not necessarily mean that the video will have a structured story or narrative to it.

• The camera may move in time with the music. This can add a sense of connection to the audience as well as rhythm. While the camera moves to eat beat, the audience can relate to this as they too can move to the music along with the beat. This can also give the music video some structure as the audience can interpret where/how the camera is going to move in relation to the music.

A good example of Carol Vernallis's findings is the song Price Tags by Jessie J. The music video features a few jump cuts as well cuts and camera movements based on the beat of the song. There are a lot of base tracks used in which it keeps jumping back to once showing another shot, giving the video some structure. Also, there are a lot of jump cuts (some bits have more than 4 jump cuts in 1 second) which proves Carol Vernallis's theory. 

Another example is Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas. They use very obvious special effects in their music video along with jump cuts on the beat.