"The goal that I have in my video essay, “Music Videos as Cinematic Form,” is to look at some prominent recent examples of music videos that buck the preconceptions of the music video form and instead adopt qualities of the cinematic form, namely length and narrative as I outline in the video, as embodied by “Runaway” by Kanye West, “Dirty Computer” by Janelle Monae, and “Lemonade” by Beyonce. Music videos have long seemed to exist on a different formal plane from film and television, instead occupying the space of short promotional pieces that are ultimately intended as advertising for the music on display, rather than as valuable cultural and artistic objects in their own right. Understanding the tropes and traditions of music videos is important in understanding the shift away from that mode; luckily, the mainstream, familiar brand of music video (the artist/artists singing to the camera, sometimes dancing, sometimes playing instruments, in some sort of constructed scenario) is ubiquitous enough that it becomes clear what makes these examples different. And through the format of the video essay and handling the footage myself, it becomes even more clear how distinct and different these projects are from what is standard. Similarly, there is a visual clarity and bombast to the three projects I look at; they indulge in special effects and mixing aesthetics and legitimately gorgeous imagery, Now, these are not the first music videos to reject the norms of the form and lean into something more cinematic, but where in the past they have felt like isolated incidents (“Thriller” by Michael Jackson comes to mind), the proximity with which these projects have been released in respect to each other and increasing experimentation with the function of music videos in recent years (i.e. “Moonlight” by Jay Z; “This is America” by Childish Gambino) suggests that there is an ongoing trend, that the production of music videos in these long-form, experimental styles is something with staying power and has some resonance with mainstream audiences and artists alike.One of the things that I want to make clear through this video essay is that music videos are an exciting and interesting field of production once more. I state in the essay that these projects show a roadmap for an exciting and bold direction for music videos to take, which is something I fully believe and something that, it seems, artists and directors believe as well."