Conventions of a Music video - Joe Jones

During today's lesson, our group discussed the key concepts of a music video from any genre. These included a variety of shots within the music video; deciding whether the video should contain a narrative, a performance or both; ensuring the video follows the song in terms of mood, genre and timings; and, most important of all, making sure the video covers the full length of the song. After discussing these key concepts, we as a class watched several examples of music videos that had been filmed as part of a group's A2 coursework. Whilst some of the videos were a success in terms of including the key concepts of a music video, others were an unmitigated disaster. It could be said, therefore, that music videos that contain the key concepts are more likely to score higher when marked than those who didn't. We then watched a variety of music videos across several genres and tried to identify some common themes and patterns. After doing this, we compiled a list of what we perceived to be conventions of the music video;Lip syncing - imitating saying the lyrics. Performance - lots of the videos had the band/artist performing interspersed with the narrative of the videos.Costume - often ties in with the style and genre of the music.Visually AppealingFast Cuts - synonymous with the beat and pace of musicProvokes a reaction - quite a few of the videos we watched intended to have a lasting effect on the audience, for example a video we watched by the Aphex Twins called Come To Daddy, aimed solely to shock and frighten the life out of its viewers. Lack of lyrical context - often the themes in the video do not directly match the lyrics of the song.Narrative - Most of the videos we watched had a narrative/story line.Locations - appropriate locations to match either the style or genre of the artist or the narrative of the video."Hook"- A lot of the videos had a 'hook', which is a idea or theme that makes the video memorable and thus promotes the song. For example, in Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', the hook is the idea that Michael Jackson's character is a zombie and transforms into one and dances with the other zombies. Humour - A few of the videos we watched brought elements of humour to their videos, to make the audience laugh and to entertain. One example is the song 'Jizz in My Pants' by the Lonely Island, which is a spoof. The video is, I think, hilarious, and helped greatly to promote the song, with over 8.8 million views on YouTube.