Conventions of music videos.

Typical Conventions

• Extreme Close-ups of the lead singer• A narrative story usually about love• Fast Paced• Relationships between lyrics and video• Iconography of the artist• Voyeurism

• Typical Locations – Studio because it’s cheaper or one location, making a music video is expensive! For example ; Lady Gaga – Bad Romance was shot in a studio, all of it.

• Typical Characters – The protagonist, also known as the main character, most likely to be the lead singer of a band for example.

• Typical Mise En Scene (Iconography) – Depends on the genre, for example a rock band will tend to wear black to show the rebellious image of rock stars, where as a female artist as a protagonist in a video will probably wear white to show the innocence.

• Typical Narratives – Usually a love based story always with a beginning, middle and end.

• Typical Media Language –

Cinematography – Close ups, extreme close ups.

Lighting – High Key, Low key if a bad mood is aiming to be established.

Editing – The pace of editing matches the pace of the song, this is a parallel instead of contrapuntal.

Ideologies – Bad never prevails, love etc.

Main Pioneer of music videos…

Michael Jackson – Thriller, one of the first brilliant music videos of all time. Aired on Halloween in 1984, costing around $800,000.

Andrew Goodwin

• Artist’s bring their own iconography to the music and music video.

• Genres have their own video style such as Rock videos having live footage, such as The Story So Far with Quicksand.

• Close ups of the lead singer.• Relationship between the music and the

visuals.

Pete Fraser

• Lyrics – Key lines may play a part in visuals associated with the song but very rarely will a video mirror all the lyrics of the song.

• Music – A music video tends to make use of the tempo of the track to help with editing

• Genre – Can be easily categorised based on mise en scene, cinematography and editing

• Cinematography – Has a significant impact on meaning and may accompany the performers, circling the band as they perform.

• Editing – Most is usually fast-cut-montage rendering, some occasionally slow it down to establish mood of the song.

Video’s That Break The Conventions

• Don Broco – Thug Workout

• Don Broco completely break the conventions of music videos, they have used very basic camera’s and used locations around where they live. Basically they have done the video for absolutely free.

Prodigy – Smack my b*tch Up

• The Prodigy were one of the original bands to break the conventions in music video, they shoot the video completely in first person, unlike most videos that are mixed with extreme close ups, lighting and different shots.

Branding – Tom Delonge (Blink-182) and Macbeth branding.

• Branding is used continuously in music videos, whether its blink-182 or Taylor Swift. Branding is a brilliant way for an artist to earn sponsorships and in a sense help to pay for the music video itself. For example –