Codes and conventions of a music video
Codes and conventions are a way of constructing meaning in media texts, in this case, a music video. The codes and conventions can be split into two different categories, technical and symbolic. Technical meaning; different camera angles and shots, the style and pace of the editing and other conventional factors. The symbolic meaning of a music video would be the ideas that are created beyond the obvious. For example, specific facial expressions and mise-en-scene. Codes and conventions in music videos are used to give the audience the idea of what genre the music video is. It is also used to make sure that the lyrics of the song match the music video itself.
There are many styles of music videos. These include:
Performance – Band / artist playing.
Narrative – Includes story.
Mixture – Both performance and narrative based.
Cameo – Band / artist features in the narrative but doesn’t perform. (Foo Fighters)
Animation – Digitally (flash) / Stop-frame.
The codes and conventions can depend on a variety of shots depending on the technique of the genre that is trying to be shown to the audience. For example, a crane shot would always be used in some sense when filming a band playing on stage for a music video. There are many different editing techniques in a music video. The most common type of editing technique would be using a jump shot, this technique would be used to enable quick cuts to make a music video seem speedy and fast paced depending on the speed of the music video.
Recent rock/indie music video's consits normally of a narative plus the band playing:
Pop music video's normally consit of the pop star surronded by other dancers:
One of the greatest and first narrative based music videos was Thriller by Michael Jackson:
Tom Winn
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