Codes and Coventions of a Music Video

The purpose of  music video, is to promote the single, album and also to promote the artist or band, a typical music video feeds, adapts and creates a 'star image'. It also sets the meanings of a song through the visuals and most importantly it is made to entertain the audience.

Let me entertain you!

There are various elements to a music video for example there is performance, narrative, thematic and symbolic. In addition  music video is usually between 3-4 minutes long with a various mix of these elements and it does this to advertise the artist/band and song/album.

Performance:

• It was first from clips of performance that created a music video
• often contains shots of the artist performing 
• It could be a live performance with various shots of the audience as well
• it can show the artist in real life situations such as warming up back stage or fooling around with friends similar to Tonight Alive's video ' What are you so scared of'
• often it has many close ups of the artists and a particular visual style, a motif such as prop or action 
• often the artist could appear in unusual places and lip sync to the song

Narrative:

Avril Lavigne's Smile Music video of her picking up the broken hearts

• This often tells some sort of story through the music video such as a break up or falling in love.
• Its almost like a mini film, with a beginning, middle and ending 
• it can also promote a film through the narrative such as Black Veil Brides promoting the film 'The Avengers' with their song 'Unbroken' 
• Sometime the artist is part of it and at other times the observer such as Avril Lavigne's 'Smile' music video 
• Its very fast paced with many cuts 
• mimics other films or TV genres
• sometimes the story can contradict what is seen for effect like Carly Rae Jepson's 'call me maybe' when the guy at the end turns out to be gay.

Thematic:

• There are a lot of common themes in the video
• depends on the genre of music, for example heavy metal go for a more performance dominated video.

 Symbolic:

•  Uses a lot of symbols to build up meaning
• lots of use of montages 
• lights often used to suggest mood
• fast paced
• pictures to support or contradict the lyrics

Some other codes and conventions: 

Visually stylish – ‘artistic’ mise-en-scene

Cutting related to the rhythm of the music

Intercutting between performance and images or story

Experimental use of camera/editing (hand held camera, distortion of colours)

Often break the rules of continuity editing.  Can use lots of jump cuts

Lots of use of digital effects