Features and Conventions of Promotional Music Videos

The purpose of a music video is to sell an artist's song by eliciting a reaction that causes the audience to remember the track. Further to being entertaining, another purpose is to present a better understanding of the song and show meaning through visuals. Promotional music videos also are created with the intention of selling CDs and expanding an artist's profile as the video markets the band.

These videos usually contain many long shots, close ups and mid shots which are supposed to create emphasis on the emotions, the artist and location. Close ups can not only be used to better explore one's emotions but also to reflect the song lyrics by the movement of the actor's lips. Sudden change in topic? At least use connectives to ease between topics. The movement of the camera is meant to follow the artist or band. The movements used in music videos include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots. In our video, we do not plan on using these techniques as the cost is expensive and difficult to set up, not something that is not feasible for school students working on a project. Record labels are more willing to pay a lot of money for the creation of their videos as they often allow record sales to become profitable. Should you be discussing your own plans to use these techniques? Or just discussing the features and conventions in general?

Mise-en-scene is another important convention of music videos as the placement of props and actors on the stage or set creates meaning. Lighting adds emphasis on certain people or objects and adds importance to specific parts of the set, thus forging itself as another important element of mise-en-scene.

Within editing jump cuts are typically used as it allows sudden change from one scene to another. Fade and dissolve transitions also serve as popular choices within music videos as they add a more diverse transition compared to simple cuts.

Andrew Goodwin Who is he? made very valid points as to what is important within music videos. He said the relationship between the lyrics and visuals need to match, meaning the images serve to represent the lyrics. He also said the tone and atmosphere of the visuals reflect the words used, related to his first point about the lyrics and visuals, meaning all aspects of the video are required to relate to one another for a memorable and well made video. This is a very good point, however some videos contradict the narrative of the lyrics. Need to consider this too. What genre may do this? (Dance does this often.) Why might that be a convention of the genre?