Forms and Conventions of a Music Video

Once making up my mind on creating a music video I decided to research into what a music video is and what the forms and conventions of a typical music video are, so that I have a clearer understanding helping me on what to include and how to start creating my video.
A music video is a short film or video which accompanies a piece of music or a song. Most contemporary music videos are mainly made as a marketing tool used to promote the sale of music recordings. The term ‘music video’ came into use in the early 1980’s, prior to this they were described as ‘filmed insert’, ‘promotional film’ ‘promotional clip’ or ‘film clip’. In the 1980’s MTV based their format around the medium, and they were responsible for bringing music videos to popularity. A wide range of film making techniques are used within making music videos, including live action filming, animation, documentaries, and also non-narrative approaches such as abstract film which are used continually throughout the planning, filming, and editing.


The general theory of forms and conventions of a music video have been said to be:


 Lyrics: establish a general feeling/mood/sense of topic rather than a meaning.
 Music: tempo often drives the editing.
 Genre: might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles.
 Camerawork: has an impact on meaning. Movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the representation of the artist/band.
 Editing: the most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.
 Intertextuality: not all audiences will spot a reference, which would not significantly detract from their pleasure in the text itself, but greater pleasure might be derived by those who recognise the reference and feel flattered by this. It also increases the audience’s engagement with, and attentiveness to the product. Many music videos draw upon cinema.
 Exhibitionism: The apparently more powerful independent female artists of recent years have added to the complexity of the politics of looking and gender/cultural debates, by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting, a sexualised gaze.



Some constricted views on the forms and conventions of a music video have been:


Andrew Goodwin’s Theory
 Visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music.
 Genres often have their own music style/iconography.
 Close-ups should always be included.
 The artist/band might want to develop their own star iconography, which becomes their star image.
 Voyeurism is a common theme within music videos.
 Intertextual references are also popular.
 Goodwin argues that the female performer is frequently objectified principally for display purposes, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star.


Steve Archer’s Theory
 There needs to be a strong and logical relationship between narrative and performance in music promos.
 Music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band.
 A carefully choreographed dance might be part of the artist’s performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the ‘repeatability’ factor.


John Stewart’s Theroy
 The music video has the aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close-ups and illumination being used to focus on the star’s face.
 He sees visual reference in music video as coming from a range of sources, although the three most frequent are perhaps cinema, fashion and art photography.
 Stewart’s description of the music video as ‘incorporating, raiding and reconstructing’ is essentially the essence of Intertextuality, using something with which the audience may be familiar, to generate both nostalgic associations and new meanings.
 The video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can. The mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.


Laura Mulvey’s Theory
 Because filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in films is often solely for the purposes of display rather than for narrative purpose.
 The purpose of this displace is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in spectators, which presumes a ‘male gaze’ one that is a powerful domineering gaze at the female on display, who is effectively objectified and passive.