Lyrics

Conventions of music videos

There are many conventions within music videos which come together to create appealing and entertaining effects.

Lyrics within music videos give the song a sense of meaning which the viewer can use to understand the message of the artist and to help better understand the meaning of the video.

The music video usually enforces the message of the lyrics and can have an inspirational effect on the viewers. The Tempo of the music usually comes hand in hand with the editing which often reflects on the mood of the track for example if it is a song with a fast tempo the cuts throughout the video will be at a fast tempo.

The genre of the music video might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles.

Cinematography creates meaning within music videos through the use of movement angles and shot distance to represent the band /artist with the dominance of closeups which would give to the viewer a greater effect of voyeurism narcissism and even fetishism depending on circumstance.

Intertextuality is a common convention with music videos as references to links made by the artists gives the fans who know more about the performer(s) a greater sense of pleasure as they feel flattered by this.

Exhibitionism is yet another common factor used in recent years by predominantly female artists to capture the gaze of male spectators which makes the video appeal more to them.

LIIAR

Language - Cinematography, editing, mise en scene and sound. It is essentially how the audience read and interpret the media text through conventions, elements and structures. This is called media literacy which allows the audience to read the media language. Media Language within a music video is trying to convey a message to the reader about the artist and there ideology's. Within my groups music video we are trying to create sympathy towards the protagonist and give to the audience a message to be thoughtful and sincere towards others through the use of narrative, the somber tones of the non diegetic music and various techniques we will deploy through the micro elements.

Institution - institution is the producer of the text. In this case we control the production process of the music video. We can choose the content of the video to share our common ideology's with the audience. Most media texts are not only created to entertain because there main target is to make money. Nowadays institution is linked to Audience as the consumers are also becoming producers of texts themselves (democratisation). Another way in which they are linked is in the way that audience is targeted by the institution. At the moment there is a lot of democratisation which means the institute is allowing more people to produce media texts.

Ideology - A shared system of beliefs which are portrayed from our perspective within our music video.

Audience - Age, class, gender and social group all help define a target audience. The Audience is the consumer of the product and one of the most important aspects when you are producing the media text because it is crucial that the audience enjoy what you are creating otherwise no money is going to be made if it isn't consumed. The audience which my music video is aimed at are older teenagers to young adults as I feel this is who the genre of the music is more aimed towards.

representation - How we will use micro elements and conventions to represent the narrative and create meaning for the audience. Society and social groups within the society. My media text will be representing certain messages about the group of people that it represents. The social group which is being represented throughout the video is teenagers even though the video is aimed perhaps at an older audience. The age of the main protagonist in the music video is a student at school around 17 years old.

History of chosen media

A music video is a short video or film that accompanies a song or a piece of music. Modern music videos are mostly intended as a marketing strategy as they use the artists to promote their track through voyeurism, narcissism and some times fetishism. The history of music videos goes back a long time however they started becoming very popular in the 1980's when MTV based its media on music video's. At that time music videos were described by various terms such as ''filmed insert'' and ''promotional (promo) films''. Many musical short films were created in 1926 with the arrival of sound films and talkies. In the late 1950's a visual jukebox also known as the scopitone was created in France were many artists would create short films to accompany there songs. The use of the scopitone spread to other countries and machines of a similar nature were created such as Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA. In 1960 one of the earliest performance music video was creates as a promo made by The Animals for their song in 1964 "House Of The Rising Sun". The promo was filmed in colour and was very high quality for it's time as it was made on a film set.In the video the audience see for the first time a lip synced performance shown through an edited sequence of tracking shots, closeups and long shots, as the band walked around the set in a series of choreographed moves. In 1967–1973 promotional clips grew in importance as they were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV when the bands were not available to appear live. In 1974–1980 music television started to begin. In the late 1970's Top of The Pops started to show music videos on air, however the BBC limited the number of videos they could show each week to increase song sales as the viewer would hope to see the video which they liked the next week. In 1981 - 1991 music videos went main stream. In 1981 MTV launched ''video killed the radio star'' beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. In 1992 MTV started to credit the directors as well as the artists as they had realised that the auteur's had an increasingly larger part to play in the creation of new music video. In 2005 music videos became easily accessible on the Internet through sites such as YouTube and myspace. This allowed audiences to access any music videos within seconds thus making music videos one of the biggest marketing factors in music history.

Brief

A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following options: a website homepage for the band; a cover for its release on DVD; a magazine advertisement for the DVD.

I have chosen to do the music video brief as i have a great interest in music and also i feel that in selecting this brief it will benefit me greatly for future career possibilities. It is something different which i have never done before and i am very eager to get the project underway.

From the brief i have chosen to do the DVD cover and the magazine advertisement for the DVD.