Narrative in music videos

It can't be ignored, the story that some music video's carry. And this isn't more true than in the videos of 30 seconds to mars; a band fronted by Jared Leto (actor in Suicide Squad, Dallas Buyers Club and Fight club). It may be due to the singer's connection to film that means that the band lean to more story driven videos. When talking about this story element, one video in particular springs to mind; and that is for the video "The Kill".

This video links is clearly heavily influenced by the shining, as it features some of the iconic characters and scenes from that film- such as the bar scene and the bear mascot; But does bring in some rather unique elements into the mix.

While this video contains both performance and narrative elements, it is clearly more weighted towards telling a story. It even features little inserts of acting and drama to further the story such as at the start when Jared is filling his band members in on the hotel. This is rather common place in more narrative music videos. Some even featuring bits of action midway through the song. an example of this is "From Yesterday" by 30 Seconds to Mars.

While i can see the attraction of a strong narrative in music videos, especially when mixed with performance elements (much like my product) i feel that sometimes it can actually be detrimental to the overall feel of the music video as too much of it is separate from the music itself; which, after all, is what the music video is designed to accentuate. However, from these two videos i can take a lot of inspiration on how i can layout my music video in terms of shots and the blend between performance and story telling.