Key Conventions of a Music Video

key conventions of a music video 

 Promotes a single and, normally, an album

 Promotes the  artist or band

 Creates, adapts or feeds into a ‘star image’

Entertains the audience

Sets the ‘meanings’ of a song  by the use of images

Music videos are a key way for an artist to show their audience who they are and what their music is about. Music videos are usually betwen 2-4 minutes but there are a few that are over that, for example lady gaga's marry the night 

In 2010 the average musician's budget for a music video was between £200,000-500,000.

The most expensive music video of all time was Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson's song 'scream' .

Artist(s)	Song title	Director	Original air date	Production costs (PC)	Inflation-adjusted PC (2012)
Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson	"Scream"	Mark Romanek	1995	$7,000,000[1]	$10,676,567

Although it is the most expensive video ever made it is not the most popular of all the music videos. Some videos have over a million views and the artists are not even in the charts. This is because of websites like youtube where you can view music videos for free for example the most viewed video of 2011 is 

There are different types of music videos:   

Performance

Narrative

Thematic

Symbolic

a performance video  

Often contain shots of the artists performing.

                    Can be the artists in “real life” situations eg warming up, talking, fooling around.

Can be a live stage performance, with shots of artists and audience.

Often includes lots of close ups of the artist and there can be a particular visual style that goes

 with the artist (a motif) eg particular clothing, actions, props, type of images. 

Often the artist can appear to perform in an unusual place - all lip-synched  eg a field, a rooftop

for example "someone like you" by Adele.  

                                          Narrative

a narrative music video tells the story visually