Overall Conventions of Music Videos

Cinematography

In terms of cinematography music videos include many long shots, close ups and medium shots. This is to create emphasis on the artist, location and emotions. Also, close ups are used not only to show emotions but to reflect the words of the song with the movement of the lips of the artist, who often features heavily within it. The movement of the camera is used to follow and the trace the artist or the band. Camera movements include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots. These movements add variety and keep the audience enticed and can make a music video have a mood, for example, sad and empathetic or upbeat and fun.

Mise-en-scene

The mise-en-scene refers to the arrangement of performers and props in the scene/frame for the production of a music video or even any other type of media text. An example is “You Belong with Me” by Taylor Swift; the mise-en-scene involves her dancing around her teenage bedroom energetically in different costumes. This reflects her hectic love life and the confusion of her feelings for her crush because she feel she cannot be herself and has all this extra energy to expend.

Editing

Within the topic of editing jump cuts are usually the predominant editing technique used in music videos. This is because this allows a sudden change from one scene to another. This type of editing is used heavily within the Taylor Swift video because the changing of costumes is synchronized to the beat of the music. Similarly transitions such as fade and dissolve are also very common in music videos as they create a different effect to cuts.

Lighting

Some music videos are black and white and this type of lighting helps to emphasis a particular mood. However some music videos do have artificial lighting which means the artist has an enhanced look. In order to replicate a music video we will not have access to professional artificial lighting but we can use certain editing tools to help us.

Sound

In terms of sound, music videos usually have the soundtrack running throughout the production and the vocals are prominent. There can be some dialogue in order for the song to have narrative and give context to the audience but these pieces of dialogue are often short and concise.