Conventions of a music video

General Conventions of a Music Video

Lyrics

• Establish a general feeling/mood/sense of subject rather than a meaning

Music

• Tempo often drives the editing.• Variation in voice (higher/lower), the

incorporation of new sounds and new beats drives the editing.

ASAP ROCKY…Notice how the ‘beat’ picks-up, resulting in the increased speed of editing. Here’s a question, however, how is continuity not lost?

Genre

• The genre is often reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles.

Tribe vs. Whitney…what differences can you notice in…-mise en scene-performance-editing-camera work-themes

Camerawork

• Has an impact on meaning. Movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the representation of the artist/band (close-ups dominate)

‘Put Your Hands up For Detroit’…describe the camera movement; why is it used to create representation?

Editing• The most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering

many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing.

• Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.

The Horrors, ‘She is the New thing’…What can you say about the editing and special effects? How do you think it was done?

Intertextuality• Not all audiences will spot a reference, which would not significantly

detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but greater pleasure might be derived by those who recognise the reference and feel flattered by this.

• It also increases the audience’s engagement with, and attentiveness to the product.

How many times do we see the Prodigy logo in this video; what ideas are connected to it?

Movies

• Many music videos draw upon cinema.

Madonna’s Material Girl drew on the song sequence Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend in Howard Hawk’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Why would a music video artist do this?

Exhibitionism

• The apparently more powerful independent female artists of recent years have added to the complexity of the politics of looking and gender/cultural debates, by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting, a sexualised gaze.

50 Cent’s ‘Candy Shop’, like many hip hop videos, contains a lot of exhibitionism. Why do you think this is so?