Codes and Conventions of Music Videos

Here are the commonly known codes and conventions when making a music videos, concering cinematography and editing.

For the cinematography, if the music video is a live performance of the band/artist there has to be camera movements such as panning around the band/artist, canted angles and any other angle that will create a sense of movement, even if the artist is standing still and only singing. This could be due to the fact that the video would be very plain and boring if the camera stayed focused on the artist and they did not move around. Another important technical code is that the music video must feature a lot of close ups of the artist, and must be predominate to make sure the audience are aware of who the artist is, and to make them like them. Interesting fact that due to the size of the television screens, they used close ups to make the artist closer towards the screen, as if they used a lot of wide shots the artist would be far in the screen and the audience may not be able to recognise them as good. This is not so much of a problem nowadays due to the increasing sizing of the television  but is still vital as they need to make sure the audience feel a connection with the artist and remember their face.

Moving onto editing, it is a common occurrence for music videos to feature a fast paced montage (many shots coming together) that are impossible to grasp on the first viewing, so that they have to watch it multiple times to get the full picture. They do not have to do this, as some music videos do have a slower pace to establish mood and atmosphere through slow transitions. Something that have become more popular nowadays is digital effects. These are used as they offer the audience different pleasures and freshen up the music video watching experience. These digital effects could be split screen, colourisation and some even feature blockbuster film style CGI (computer generated imagery). More and more music videos are using green and blue screen (chroma-key) when making videos due to them being cheap and allowing them to create scenes that would cost a lot to create if made without the chroma-key. 

Godwins music video analysis was invented in 1992, which came into six stages which all music videos should include:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics e.g: stage performances in a rock band video, a dance routine in a pop video and so on.
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, which is further broken down to what it actual does: illustrates, amplifies or contradicts the lyric meaning.
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals, which again shares the same broken down headings as number 2.
4. Lots of close ups of the artist, may create a visual style e.g: Lady GaGa and her unique style of weirdness.
5. References to the notion of looking e.g: a screen within a screen, a voyeuristic treatment of the female body and so on.
6. There are often intertextual references e.g:  to other films, television programmes and even other music videos.

John Stuart had a famous quote about intertextuality which goes as the following: ''incorporating, raiding and reconstructing''