Conventions of a music video

Movement

Movement plays a big part in music videos,  whether this is the camera physically moving in time with the song or the people in the video dancing or moving in time with the music also. By having their movement in a music video it compliments the song because everything matches with each other.  if a song fast, music videos usually have a lot of cuts to emphasise the madness of it, in contrast to slower songs, it will have less cuts and show the calmness so it links with the song. for example, Nicki Minaj's song 'Superbase' is very upbeat with a lot of cuts so the movement fits in with the song.

Narrative

Not all videos have narrative but a fair few do. The story line may relate to what's going on in the music video and try to illustrate what's going on or it could give us additional information along side the video. An example of this is Enrique Iglesias song 'Hero', through out the video its a short story, showing us that they start of happy together and then it slowly goes down hill and ends up with him dying, but the video is showing us how and why it happens.




Band/ artists

 Music videos usually involve the band or artist who are singing the song because this makes people want to watch it more because they like to see how they are dressed and if they look any different. It also helps their product to be sold. They are usually lip-syncing their song and in case of a band they're playing their instruments. If the artists isn't singing they are featured in the video acting as character, or the video may feature both them singing and acting. for example, in Lana Del Rey 'National anthem' video it shows her acting but occasionally showing her singing to her song. The lyrics are also linked to what she is acting out. However the band or artist could also change themselves into a cartoon character for their video, so they represented in some other way.


Intertextuality

Music videos are very good at showing the audience what genre they are going for, this allows it to be possible for producers to play with the conventions by making references to the genre in the music video, this is what they call Intertextuality. Some references in videos can be very obvious to spot by some band copying scenes from another pop bands video. Then others can be more obscure. an example of this is Blink 182 copy scenes from another pop bands video Back Street Boys video I Want It That Way. An example of the obscure ones is My chemical Romance's Teenagers reminiscent of the cheerleaders in the video Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana.