Styles, conventions and techniques of the music videos

Styles

• Think about- the colour, location, choreography and performance, narrative (story) , sexual/ violent content, The image of the musician, representation ( gender, class , age etc), humor editing, lighting 

Taylor swift 22 pop 

•  colour= bright colours like reds and pinks 
• mainly at the beach, at her backyard and at her house 
• white background 
•  representation = mostly women shown in the video 
• choreography= dancing around being girly 
• upper middle class 
• image of musician = sweet and lovely 
• Editing = lots of other shots 
• Lighting = quite a lot it was very bright  

Rap and hip hop 

•  colour = mixture of colour 
•  location = on the streets driving 
• Sexual content is involved 
• gangster image 
• mixed gender male and female, working class, mid 20s 

Rock and heavy metal 

• Colour = much darker colours, black 
• location = outside a haunted house 
• image of musician= deluded, ,metal, scary, horror 

style 1 : in concert and as live footage

style 2: animation 

style 3: illustrative/ interpretive ( illustrative= one which will use the literal lyrics as a basic for the visuals and interpretive= encourages audience to speculate as to the deeper meaning of the song by using narrative which is not lifted literally from the lyrics, and the bond between the two will not be immediately obvious) 

style 4: Narrative ( the way the story is told, how the music video communicates the story to the audience) 

style 5 : surrealist ( an art movement which aims to break down boundaries between fantasy, dreams and reality) 

Style 6 : Pastiche and homage ( this is where one media text in this case a music video references another in an affectionate way as tribute).

style 7 : parody ( where one media text imitates another) 

Conventions 

• Lyric interpretation 
• Extending or consolidating song's meaning 
• Things (pastiche/ homage and parody )
• links to other artists or collaborations? 

Techniques 

1) cutting to beat 

2) Visual effects (  particularly in the early days of CGI) 

3) Miming and lip-sync 

4) Chroma key ( this is a special effect/ post- production technique for composting