Music Video Conventions

MUSIC VIDEO CONVENTIONS!

Camera Shots: Music videos tend to include many long shots, close ups and mid shots. This is to create emphasis on the artist, location and emotions. Also, close ups are used not only to show emotions but to reflect the words of the song with the movement of the lips of the artist. Long shots are often used for band performances, to show the band and the intsruments being played.

Camera Movement: The movement of the camera is used to follow and trace the artist or band. Camera movements include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots.

Mise-en-scene: This refers to the arrangement of performers and props on stage or in a scene for a production of a music video or any other media text. Mise-en- scene puts importance on the representation of something. An example is, ‘Mad’ by Neyo. The mise-en scene involves him walking down a road alone, being in an isolated room. This reflects the isolation from his lover. Also, the props include hats and dark clothes which represent the down mood of the song. Similarly, the lighting is kept very dark as it is black and white; this connotes the angry and depressed mood. This is just one example of the mise en scene used to give an idea of how mise-en-scene works. Usually the setting, mood of the song and costume will all reflect one another. For example with a sad song, it may be raining in the video and the singers may be dressed in dull colours.

Editing: Jump cuts is the predominant editing technique used in music videos. This is because this allows a sudden change from one scene to another. Similarly, transitions such as fade and dissolve are very common in music videos as they create a different effect to cuts.

Other main conventions consist of:

Lighting: Some music videos are black and white which help emphasise a particular mood and some videos have artificial lighting which put the artist/s in an enhanced look.Usually consists of 'hard' or 'soft' lighting. Hard lighting is where there is an abundance of lighting, to make the scene look bright, usually will be all 3 of the '3 key lights'. In soft lighting one or more of the lights will be removed to create different effects.

Sound: Sound is mainly the vocals or the song but in some cases such as Michael Jackson – Thriller, the producers can make the music video into a short film.

Props: These are a vital in aiding to add to the scene and create significance on particular objects or people.

Costume: This goes with the scenes in the song and reflects the genre. Costume is an important factor because it has a slight influence on how the viewers will dress because they use some of the celebrities as role models

Colour: Colours tend to set the mood of the song through creating an atmosphere. For example, dark colours are used more in rock songs such as Kings of Leon and bright colours are seen to be used more in hip hop and pop videos.

Music conventions in Indie/Rock:
• The colour of the video changes depending on the lyrics of the song and the tempo of the music it can be bright, dark and sometimes black and white.

• Tends to be black and white

• The artist/band is shown throughout the video

• Use of extreme close ups and long shots are popular to show the main artist singing and other band mates performing as well as wide shots of the whole band.

• Dark costumes

• Usually a mixture of performance/narrative; sometimes the whole band performs and other times just the main vocalist sings. When Indie music videos do have a narrative they are often quite symbolic and do not literally follow the lyrics.

• Dark locations

• Fast paced

• Some use of special effects