Conventions - Form

Conventions - Form

Before planning my music video I did various amounts of research, a main part of my research was looking into typical codes and conventions used within music videos. From analysing existing products during my lessons I have begun to understand the different conventions used within music videos. In my own work I would like to incorporate some of these certain conventions, as I am creating a pop video it is clear that this genre tends to follow these conventions and it is evident that my audience likes the conventions within the video. In certain genres these conventions are broken to create a more original or testing video for the mass audience. Here is a list of the general conventions used within music videos;

·         Cinematography – close ups and mid shots are regularly used to show emotion of the artists

·         Camera movement – pans, tilts, tracking and crane shots – used to follow or trace the artist or band

·         Mise en scene – a variety of mise en scene conventions are used to create verisimilitude such as locations, setting, props, make up and costumes

·         A narrative is either based on a storyline or can be abstract

·         Editing – jump cuts are the most predominate editing technique used as it allows sudden change from one scene to another.

·         Lighting – various music videos use black and white to emphasise a particular mood or other videos have artificial lighting.

·         The use of colour is used to match the song and the image the artist is trying to put across

·         Sound – mainly vocals and the non-diegetic sound of the soundtrack, however certain videos use dialogue breaks to enhance the story of the narrative

·         Props are vital in creating significance of particular objects or people.

·         Editing transitions are used such as fades, dissolves, overlaps, reverse and slow motion.

·         Performance elements are included for example a dance sequence and lip-syncing

·         The artist or band usually features themselves within the video as the main protagonist

·         Editing to the beat and the lengths of the shots match the tempo of the song.  

Conventions - Narrative or Abstract

I have analysed certain videos and here are some examples of different videos that are solely based on the storyline narrative and others that are abstract based. A video that has clear narrative is Magic’s ‘Rude’ this video follows a storyline that has a clear beginning, middle and end, another video similar to this Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’. In comparison to these videos other artists create abstract videos such as Lady Gaga’s ‘Applause’ that focuses on modern art and has feature shots of her throughout the video imitating certain modern art pieces.

Convention - Perfmance

With the performance element in music videos pop videos are typically known to include this convention. A clear artist known to do this is Beyoncé; in Beyoncé’s ‘Love on Top’ the main focus of the video is on the performance element of the dance routine. Here are some screen shots taken from the video and how performance in incorpareted within the video.;

Here is typical medium close up of the artist, it also show Beyoncé lip-syncing which is a known performance convention.

This screen shot shows the dance element within the video, throughout the video Beyoncé follows a dance routine that is the main focus of the performance convention in the video.  

Convention – Mise en scene

Carrying on with Beyonces ‘Love on Top’, the use of mise en scene in this video is easily noticable as there are various costume, make up and hair changes throughout. Also she uses several props in the video to enhance the overall look of the setting. Here are some screen shots of the costume changes and the props used;

In the opening scene Beyonce is seen to be wearing a simple leotard, and the props used are a microphone stand, microphone, hat and the addition of backing dancers. Here are the other screen shots of the cotume changes made in the video;

The above screen shots also include the convention of the artist featuring in the video as the main protagonist, the reason behind this is to essentially sell the artist as a brand and create an image that can be used to market the artist.