Conventions of a Music Video

Conventions of a Music Video

There are a number of common conventions of a music video, which usually involve performance, narrative, animation, props & costumes, locations and editing of shots.

In terms of the artist, he will always appear in the video purely sot he audience can connect with him/her easy and so they can promote their image, and promote themselves as a brand as now the audience can put a face and identity to the music.

Generally the soundtrack lasts for the whole song, however some songs choose to use intros and outros which might add additional seconds to the total duration. Throughout this, the artist will always have shots where they are lip syncing so the audience can see the artist performing the song themselves so its not just a backing track. This could be accompanied with them playing an instrument or dancing if that is something they do in addition.

Furthermore, the video will have a number of locations and when these locations change from one to another the costumes and props generally change too, as if it's completely different times. Therefore commonly they use montage editing.

There will be a range of different camera angle and shot types which accompany the cocnept or narrative often present throughout the video. Some common types of camera movements are tracking shots and whip pans, and then the simple close up whilst the artist is lip syncing.

There may also be a use of vertical shots like high and low angles, to show the 'sexy' look or the powerful look respectively.

The video will often be based around a concept rather than a story, and the song will be the soundtrack to the whole video and will start and end when the music does.

Editing will be used to cut to the beat, and there will be many camera angles used as well as the format of montage editing.