Music Videos:Conventions of Music Videos

Conventions of Music Videos 

Conventions:

• Linear narratives - telling the story of the song or performance montages to draw attention to the song or the performers 
• Contrasting settings and associated lighting – location or studio or in performance, urban or rural, exotic or everyday, to match the style of music and the musician’s image 
• Videos may use contrasting camerawork and editing to create a tone to match the song and the musician(s), by creating documentary style naturalism or a more stylised performance, for example 
• Videos may use only the music track as soundtrack or may add diegetic elements to help create a self-contained fictional world 
• Any other valid contrasting media language 
• Narratives 
• Mise–en-scene: Costumes, facial expressions, props
• Different camerawork and/or editing
• Representations (We will have a separate lesson on this) 
• Bright lighting

Katy Perry’s TGIF is a ‘feature length’ video. 

Task 1: Which pop conventions feature music videos?

The video used a narrative to tell the story of a girl who has been at a party and changes her look throughout. The video also used different locations e.g garden, bedroom etc. Therwe is many different camera types like close ups of the artist to show the 'star image' of the performer. The costumes where very bright signalising its a pop song.

Task 2: which genres do the video conform to? For example: comedy / romcom / horror?List 4 genre conventions you spotted in each.
- pop 
- comedy 

Task 3: According to Todorov, all stories have 3 parts:Equilibrium, disruption, new equilibrium. apply this to the video
Katy is confused about whats happened in the video. She isnt cool enough and the house is a mess. She then has a makeover and everyone is shocked.