Forms & Conventions Of Music Videos

The Seven Conventions Of Music Videos

1. Lyrics
2. Music
3. Genre
4. Camerawork
5. Intertextuality 
6. Editing
7. Narrative and Performance

Forms and Conventions

The theories of Goodwin

Goodwin Extract

SUMMARISE 

Ilustration

Amplification

Disjuncture

conempory videos fit into catagorys state why

Auteur Theory / Director as Auteur

An Auteur is a filmmaker whose personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the author of the movie’. You would expect to see the film-maker’s distinctive and original style writ large throughout the film, and it would be considered to be their film even though he or she has the assistance of many other people and skills to create the project. Famous auteur directors include Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplain and Quentin Tarantino. Their films are instantly recognisable and unique to them.

Ian Wolfson / REX ARROW FILMS

Ian Wolfson is an independent filmmaker best known for his collaborative work with independent hip hop artist, Mac Miller. Over the past three years, their collaboration has amassed 400 million views online, as well as broad exposure on the MTV, VH1 and Fuse Networks. Through his company, Rex Arrow Films, Ian has also worked with dozens of other artists including Nelly, B.o.B., Bun B and Freeway. Having already completed one feature film, Ian has several new film projects currently in development.

After graduating from Taylor Allderdice High School (in the fall of the year he left, Wiz Khalifa began his freshman year), Wolfson went to Columbia University to study film theory and creative writing. After college, he worked a year in a video store, Kim’s Mediapolis (“Textbook what you do if you want to be a filmmaker”). He returned to the ‘Burgh when the opportunity to make Invisible Cities arose. A year later, in 2009, he filmed Miller’s first video for “Cruisin’."

Jean-Luc Godard’s (a renowned French auteur) film Breathless was the first film he saw in college that inspired him, because at that time in the French film industry there were accepted film mechanisms in place. Wolfson says – “And Godard was like, screw all that, I’m going to go out with a camera with some young kids and essentially break all the rules. And that mentality is extremely influential in why Mac and I have been able to go out and do what we’ve done. When we first started, we didn’t have any money at all. We were just like, let’s go out and see what we can do”. 

Creative Vision: He is a filmmaker whose work is instantly recognisable and yet it’s his love of the music and artists he films that shines though his work. He visualizes and creates films of what he hears in the music and sees in the artist and communicates that to the audience, He says:

“I think the first half of my career was much more documentary style, sort of a day in the life. Now, because my interests have changed, I’ve sort of put the focus on trying to do things that interest me in terms of concept, visuals, or the equipment that we use. I think one answer is it’s really important to try to do a video that really doesn’t artificially force an image on the artist. That could mean if the artist isn’t naturally charismatic, interesting, or quirky, then they may not make it as an artist in the long term. I think you have to have that – whether you’re Mac or A$AP Rocky you have to have that thing that draws people to you. I’m always hesitant to sort of superimpose something on the artist. I think the artist has to be interesting. Mac for example, there were so many elements against him in the beginning, but he was accessible and didn’t take himself too seriously. He clearly was enjoying himself and I think people connected with that”.

In any shoot I have to be fair to the artist. My goal is always to try to give them as close to what they want as possible. Now, often times I feel like I’m able to say, “Ok, cool. I know what you want but I think this will be more interesting or more exciting” and usually it works. I think I’ve maybe only had one instance where I really had to go back to the editing or go back to the coloring to make them happy.

Wolfson is an auteur because his work is unique to him. His personal creative vision is communicated in all his work. The way he interprets and portrays Mac Miller's songs visually is truly creative and unique. And since he's been filming Mac since 2009, the techniques used has developed as Mac has also developed lyrically. His videos range from portraying different emotions, matching which song Mac's performing, some examples of his styles are care free, happy and brightly coloured - such as 'Senior Skip Day', then in 'Missed Calls' where Mac is talking about a lost love, a more matured and emotional narrative video. Another example of his various styles is in Mac's video 'SDS' off his latest album, the video demonstrates witty humour as well as a lot of green screen animation.

What Music Means to Me

What Music Means To Me

I start and end every day listening to music, I use it to wake up in the morning and fall asleep in the evening. As I listen to multiple genres of music, I have music that I would consider more suitable at different times of the day. My favourite genres are Hip-Hop/Rap & House, so I tend to listen to them through the majority of the day (including mornings). When at night time I would tend to listen to either a slow rap song or electronic, indie rock, or rock. I love going to watch my favourite artists live at gigs, I have attended many this year as well as several festivals, I love the atmosphere when watching live music as everyone is as passionate about that artist as you are. I tend to listen to most of my music on my iPhone using either the music app or Soundcloud. 
Soundcloud is a great format as it lets me explore artists that I wouldn't otherwise listen to as new music is constantly shared onto my timeline which I look at every day. It is completely free to listen, and it means you don't have to download anything, you can just sign into your account on any device and it loads all your previously saved music for you to listen anywhere. 

It's hard to put into words what music makes you feel, from my perspective it can be a form of relaxation, getting hyped before or at a party, a way of relieving stress and even keeping concentrated. When i listen to music on my own, usually through earphones i tend to zone out of reality and just become focused on what i'm doing, which i've found to be an effective way of doing school work. As i've got older my music taste has developed it's only been the past 3 years that I have really found my taste, as before it was a bit scattered - listening to a bit of this and that, not really having a favourite artist etc. I got into Hip-Hop through an American artist called 'Logic', from then I quickly began to find more and more artists associated and similar to him and as I listened to more and more different varieties of Hip-Hop my taste grew and started to develop. When I saw Logic live in March 2013, it was a big thing for me as he was the reason that i listened to the music that i did. 

There hasn't been any major influences on my music taste, I found out about Logic through one of my best friends, but from then on I began to develop my music taste on my own. I got into House music at a later stage, there was always a need to listen to it as my brother was a successful House DJ in the 1990's. I use Soundcloud as my House music source where i can very easily explore different DJ sets and artists. 

Photo taken at Danny Brown's Rough Trade show, (i'm bottom right).

Chuck Berry (Mos Def) in
Cadillac Records.

When I think to the music played during my childhood, I think how musically influential my parents were during my upbringing. I was raised on a vast mixture of genres, with artists such as Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and The Rolling Stones.  I was shown the film 'Cadillac Records' by my father shortly after it came out in 2008, and I completely loved the music and the era's aesthetic quality and vibe. Set in 1950's Chicago, the film shows the lives of some of America's musical legends such as Etta James, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. The film featured a lot of the music recorded by the artists on the label, the one that stuck for me was 'Maybellene' by Chuck Berry. I remember being on holiday in southern Italy, driving through the countryside, listening to Chuck Berry's albums and the Cadillac Records Soundtrack in the back of the car with my best friend Gabriel. I later found out that Chuck Berry in the film was played by one of my all time favourite rappers, Mos Def.

Image shows how Numbers samples
Paramore.

There is a song by Logic that i could say could possibly be my favourite song. The song 'Numbers' off his 4th mixtape 'Young Sinatra: Undeniable', gets to me in a way i don't completely understand. Honestly after looking deeper into the lyrics i can say that they aren't particularly deep and meaningful as some of his other tracks, yet he does cover how his sudden fame has caused problems in his love life as he says "the girl I love, the one i call my honey, now i'm wondering if she love me for me or my f*****g money". As i thought deeper about why this song truly does appeal to me I concluded that it's not just the lyricism but the instrumental that i really love. After doing further research on 'WhoSampled.com' I found that the instrumental (Produced by one of Logic's sound engineers - 6ix) sampled the guitar from Paramore's song 'Decode'. I'm not sure what about the guitar riff i like so much, but i could listen to this on repeat forever and still love it.

The Creative Role Of The Director

John Stewart of the music production company Oil Factory, suggests that increasingly music videos reflect the desire of a director to demonstrate their power. The work of Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham (see me if you want to borrow any of these directors showreels) is perhaps the most striking example of authorial voice and demonstrates the potential of the medium to reach a mass audience with unusual and experimental work. 

The famous music director Jonas Akerland commented that “Music videos aren’t meant to be more than eye candy, not supposed to live long, only supposed to be lifting up the music and make the artist look good. Not supposed to be an art piece lasting for years.”

Jonathan Glazer the director for Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’ video (1996) said “Your images may be the thing that defines the sound… it’s a really strange 3 minute period where you have to hook the audience visually.”

Spike Jonze said in 2000 “I look at short videos as short films, I always make sure they have a beginning, middle and end”.

David Fincher who directed features such as Seven and Fight Club after his success in making music videos commented that “Video is truly abstract, you have complete carte blanche in terms of what it can show”.

So, as you can see the directors have very different views and approaches to making promos.

Mac Miller's 'I am who I am (Killing Time)'s music video was directed by Ian Wolfson of Rex Arrow.  I like this video as I believe it's such a unique visual to match the video, giving feeling of nostalgia and as if you were dreaming. Ian Wolfson is one of my favourite music video directors as he has been working with Mac since he started and by watching their videos chronologically you can see the videos become more sophisticated and deep, just like the content of Mac's songs. I like to think that he will inspire my idea as in this video it visually looks like a work of art, I would like to have the same feeling with my own.

Flatbush Zombies and Trash Talk's '97.92' was directed by AplusFilmz' & Pier Picture's house directors. It was created using a 360-degree HD camera rig with a remote-controlled drone octo-copter. The device is the H3Pro7, which shoots with 7 GoPro cameras all rolling simultaneously. The 7 shots are synced and stitched together to create the full-360 spherical view, which can then be manipulated with the effects and camera movements you see here. This is one of my favourite music videos purely for the use of modern technology to help their artistic vison. I don't think this video will inspire my music video too much, as we would not be able to film and create the same effects that are demonstrated in this video.

Genre Theorists

John Fiske

Fiske says that people naturally categorise events that take place in their reality in reference to their experiences in the past.. People tend to believe that genre is based on real life, however, the human mind tends to give real life events context. For example - when something seemingly super natural takes place in real life such as, if an object might randomly fall off a shelf in a supposedly haunted location on a ghost walk, people will witness this in reference to things they have seen in The Exorcist or other such films. This is convenient for producers and helps them target a market and audiences whose expectations are satisfied.

Henry Jenkins 

Jenkins says genre constantly breaks rules through hybridization – mixing genres: "Hybridization is now commonplace to maximize audience appeal but also to offer a unique selling point by appearing to break the rules e.g. Submarine is both social realist in format but using comedy conventions typical for a rites of passage film".

John Hartley 

Hartley says genre is interpreted culturally. He gives the example of Bollywood films, which are predominantly watched and interpreted culturally by a Hindi target audience who “understand the encoded metaphor and meaning through the elaborate dance routines”. 

Daniel Chandler 

Chandler feels that genre is too restricting for filmmakers and audiences. He gives the example of Gravity which limited its appeal due to predictability (notions of self sacrifice) even through Cuaron the director attempted much more than other 'space films' like Apollo 13. So there’s a type of ‘genre straightjacket’ evident.

Steve Neale 

Neale says that audiences are familiarized with genres through repetition, but also led to believe that genres are evolving and changing by for example having strong female lead characters for instance in Tomb Raider, which challenges the physically strong, dynamic, violent, male hero in the action adventure genre. This creates and maintains the interest of audiences. 

David Buckingham

Buckingham argues that genres are in a ‘constant process of negotiation and change’ and that they have to change and adapt to respond to cultural and social changes e.g. Brokeback Mountain has elements of the Western but the central story is about the love between two men, which breaks the mold of the conventional Western tough man womaniser.

Jason Mittel

Mittel shows that the industry uses genre to produce profitable material, exploiting audiences who enjoy certain types of representations e.g. tabloid newspapers and the obsession with celebrity gossip which is also used as a form of synergy with programmes like "I'm a Celebrity - Get me out of Here!"

Barry Keith Grant

Grant explains that defining film genres is surprisingly complex and that idea of genres only developed relatively recently after the 1940’s when genre pioneer Andre Bazin wrote about Gangster and Western films. Since then it has been used as a convenient label to catagorise a film and manipulate audience preferences. However the difficulty of classifying genres is because of ‘impurity’ – where genres merge.

Rick Altman

Altman notes that film classification by genre is the logical continuation of genre classification in literature. It divides an art form into various categories and  simplifies a possibly comples subject matter by fixing points and giving some useful co-ordinates to the audience.

Genres of Music

Music Genres

Genre in music helps us categorise different styles of music into conventional categories that have set conventions. It means classifying a text according to its content and style as well as its structure and way of production. Generalising, most music can be divided into these categories, with the exception of sub-genres - each of them contains a variety of sub-genres, as well as hybrids and mash-ups. 

• Pop
• Classical
• Hip-Hop/Rap
• Dance/Techno/House
• R&B
• Rock
• Metal
• Country
• Jazz
• Blues
• Reggae

Pop

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style. The embedded video below is Lana Del Rey's 'National Anthem', which falls into the sub-genre of Indie Pop.

Sometimes genres can cross over, in this instance Charli XCX's pop song is interrupted by a rap verse from Danny Brown:

Classical

Classical music, strictly defined, means music produced in the Western world between 1750 and 1820. This music included opera, chamber music, choral pieces, and music requiring a full orchestra. To most, however, the term refers to all of the above types of music within most time periods before the 20th century.

Rhythm & Blues


Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B or RnB, is a genre of popular African-American music that originated in the late 1930s. The term 'Rhythm and Blues' was first introduced into the American lexicon in the late 1940s:  designate upbeat popular music performed by African American artists that combined Blues and Jazz.

  

Hip-Hop/Rap

The music genre was the developed after product of Hip-Hop culture, a subculture which can be defined and recognised by four key elements: MCing/Rapping, DJing/scratching, break dancing and graffiti writing. As Hip-Hop is one of my favourite genres - I will show a few sub-genres that are part of the main genre.

Hip-Hop - Psychedelic Hip-Hop

Psychedelic Hip-Hop is a style of Hip-Hop music that is defined by complex sample-based beats, often about obscure material, witty and with abstract lyrics with far-out references. The video I have embedded below is a modern day example of this sub-genre.

Hip-Hop - Drill-Hop

The video embedded below is Chief Keef's 'Everyday', this song falls into the sub-genre of Drill Music/Drill-Hop, originating from the south side of Chicago. The genre is defined by it's grim, violent lyrical content and heavy trap influenced beats. 

EDM Hip-Hop

Electronic Dance Music Hip-Hop is a sub genre which falls under the sub genre of Experimental Hip-Hop, producers and DJ's that usually make EDM music create very fast paced instrumentals that work extremely well when rapped over. EDM Hip-Hop is becoming very commercialised as of the EDM factor. Below I have embedded A-Trak's 'P*ss Test' this shows a popular indie EDM artist with a few rappers featuring on the track.

Rock Music

Rock music evolved from rock and roll and pop music during the mid and late 1960s. Harsher and often self-consciously more serious than its predecessors, it was initially characterized by musical experimentation and drug-related or anti-establishment lyrics.

Rock and Roll

'Rock and Roll' is a sub genre of Rock, a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based around a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, double bass, and drums. I have embedded my a live video of my favourite Rock and Roll artist below.

Metal

Heavy Metal is a genre of rock that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuosic and powerful, the aggressive sounds of the distorted electric guitar drive metal to be arguably one of the most commercially successful sub genres of Rock Music. The video below I have embedded is my favourite metal and band - Trash Talk 'Awake'.

Blues

Blues is a genre of music developed from rural African-American experience, derived from an oral tradition of field hollers and work songs, usually performed in unison by slaves and prisoners. Although the blues' roots are in African rhythms, early Mississippi Delta blues musicians often incorporated elements of folk and Appalachian-derived "hillbilly" music into the creation of the blues.

 House

House music is an electronic up-tempo style of disco music characterized by deep bass rhythms, piano or synthesizer melodies, and soul-music singing, sometimes with elements of rap music. I have embedded an example of a house track below.

Jazz

Jazz is defined as a style of music, an American culture and distinguished by flexible rhythmic tempo, as a base accompanied with improvisation of solo and ensemble on basic tunes and chord patterns. 

  

Reggae

Reggae music is a genre that first took form during the late 1960s in the country of Jamaica. It is a genre that is defined by its distinctive rhythm, instrumentation and lyrical content.

Country

a form of popular music originating in the rural southern US. It is a mixture of ballads and dance tunes played characteristically on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and pedal steel guitar. Also called country and western.