Specific Knowledge of Music Videos

Specific knowledge of music videos

Underneath I have written some generic conventions for different genres within the music industry. I have done this because when we come to creating our own music video,  we will need to know the generic conventions of the genre we are doing. For example if we are doing a rap video we need to know to include things such as the props and including jewellery.  

This will also help to identify what genres of music we can do. For example with hip-hop music videos they will tend to have very high budgets and spend thousands on the making of the video, for us making a video for a school project this is not going to be doable.

Generic conventions within pop videos:

Camera shots - Many of the music videos tend to use long shots, close ups and mid-shots. These are used to emphasize the artist and the location. Not only are close ups used to convey the emotion but to highlight the seductiveness in the video as it would have a close up of the artist lips.

Mise-en-scene - The Mise-en-scene in music videos refers to the props and the arrangement in which they are used. The Mise-en-scene highlights the importance in which the props are representing.

The Male Gaze - This is used primarily in the female artist songs as they tend to be performance based. The male gaze highlights the seductive and sexual element within the video.

Costume and Colour - The costume is used to reflect the song, it also has a slight influence on how the audience will dress as they aspire to like their celebrity role models.  Predominantly the colours that are in pop music videos tend to bright neon colours, giving it a cheerful and an upbeat atmosphere from the song.

Editing - Editing in pop music videos are generally quite quick as they use jump cuts to fit in with the beat of the music video.

Lighting -  The lighting in pop videos tend to be quite strong as it gives off a more enhanced and powerful look to the person on show.

Target audiences

Different genres of music videos are going to have different audiences which the music companies will specifically aim at. They will have to take into consideration a to the trends and demographics of their particular audience so when it comes to marketing the song, they do this in the right way. This is also the same when it comes to distribution because the record companies need to make sure they are placing the media text in the places where the audience are going to see it.

Target audiences for pop music videos-

The target audience for pop music videos is most likely to be young people at ages of around 16-24. It is aimed mostly at teens and usually a majority of the time at young females.

Clothes: Looking at the demographic a stereotypical target audience of pop would normally wear clothing from a relatively "mainstream" store such as New Look River Island or Topshop. They would wear everyday brands that are usually on trend and in all of the fashion magazines such as Look or More.

Music: This target audience is most likely to listen to artists that are frequently on the radio and in the top 40 charts such as Lady Gaga Rihanna Usher and Beyonce. They may also listen to a lot of dance and rap songs too depending on which sort of pop singers they are into for example someone that listens to Rihanna may also listen to a lot of dance music where as someone who listens to more Usher or Kanye West might be more into rap music.

This spider diagram is showing the generic conventions within the rap genre and what is usually found or seen in them.

 

 

 

Here I have embedded a video of the song '99 Problems' by Jay Z. This is a popular song by this artist who is known as a successful rapper. This video shows all the generic conventions in my mind map and backs up my points.

The location of where the music videos are set is important. Above shows a picture of the artist on Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn is known for its history of rap and this shot shows the bridge in the background with the artist in the main view. This connotes that the artist is more important that this bridge and makes him look powerful.

The genre of the music video is rap. This artist (Jay Z) is well known for his rap and is potentially one of the most successful rap artists in this era. In the video, Jay Z is talking about current racism. I also noticed that in the video, a black and white filter was used. This might have been used because it connotes black and white coming together which is maybe this artist is aiming to do.

 

The editing for this video is fast paced which is stereotypical for a rap genre video. It used a vast number of shots which is good for the audience because they have a lot to look at. Sometimes if a video is made such as a performance video, the audience will get bored of it as there is nothing to look at. For example, on YouTube, there will be a song which was played live by the artist and the same song with the video, the music video will always have a lot more views than the performance video because there is more to look at therefore the audience will not get bored watching. It is important that the audience does not get bored because if they do then it means they might not like the song as much therefore not as many downloads will be made resulting in less profit for the artist and record label and the point of the music video is to attract as many sales as possible so they are able to profit.

This song got very popular because it had a strong narrative which involved racism so it had a lot of people talking about it. It also gave some strong opinions of what people think of black people and how the police will pick them out.