Music Video Codes and Conventions

After my analysis of the different music videos by Indie/Pop artist I have drawn some conventions of this genre.

All the music videos I analysed followed the generic conventions of all the characters being in love. They all presented female figures being happy. Interestingly, most of the videos didn't involve a man as the other half, it was left to the filming, lyrics and narrative to portray the emotion and characteristics of the song. In our video we will follow the same convention in that the women are telling a story about her love. This is a very traditional representation of women as being the weaker sex. The fact that the videos don't have a male role could contrast this however it could also prove this. Contrastingly, with not having a male character, it is not 100% apparent that the narrative is so obvious, however proving by not having the male character this could show the traditional side of a woman being emotional whatever circumstance.

The majority of shots types throughout the different videos and throughout each song are predominantly close ups and mid shots of the character in performance shots. We were not able to see a conventional narrative shot type as it varied from each music video. This is helpful to us as we know we can be creative when filming to gratify the audience. For example the narrative shots in 'Tears Dry on Their Own' involve the character walking through busy streets whereas shots in ‘Price Tag are mostly of the artist in different costumes that don’t really relate to the narrative - completely contrasting in the stereotypical narrative shots. The lighting in each video has been catered to fit the mood of each song. In some videos the lighting looks very natural and no extreme affects have been used whereas others dim the whole video making it also almost black and white. Out of our analysed videos the only one with special affects was ‘Californian Girls'. This video consists of a lot of edited shots and special effects.

The locations of each music video do not match therefore we cannot see a convention to the videos. This will get rid of the limitations when deciding where to film as we know that there isn't a certain order we will have to follow.