Codes and conventions of the music video

Professor Goodwin explains how you might be able to tell the difference between a music video and other types of media because of the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. As well as the relationship between the music and the visuals. The only thing about the music and visual is that it can be for any media text.

A lot of groups demand close ups of the man artist from their record company. The groups sometimes have their own star iconography which can become a main part of their performance.

Voyeurism is mostly used when looking at women. Voyeurism means privileged view e.g. the peeping tom.

There will likely be intertextual references to other music videos or films and TV shows.

Lyrics

Most lyrics tend to help establish a feeling/mood or a sense of a subject matter instead of offering a sound meeting.

Music

A music video will tend to make use of the tempo of the track. This is to drive the editor and this may highlight a part of the sound from the track.

Genre

Some music videos are hard to tell which genre they belong in and others are so much easier to tell. Some music videos only focus on one genre for example kerrang only focus of heavy metal and rock. Where as kiss manly focuses on hip hop. To tell the difference they might use mise-en-scene, themes, performances, camerawork and the editing styles.

Camerawork

The pace of the camerawork is important to a music video. This is because the camerawork will most probably accompany the movement of the performances.

Editing

The most common form of editing a music video is a fast cut montage, which makes many images impossible to view first time round. The videos that use a slow pace will most probably be trying to get the audience to establish a mood.