Conclusion Drawn

From our research on similar text analysis and the research we did on genre forms and conventions of music videos, we have found that the forms and conventions in majority of music videos are; it is usually performance based. It usually involved the band or the artist performing the song themselves whilst playing their instruments. Nowadays music usually represents love or a relationship between couples, so the lyrics are mainly based on someone’s feelings towards someone else, i.e. Love.

The narrative built music videos involve an act of what the song is about, for example in the video “man who can’t be moved” by The Script, it is narrative /performance built because it contains a performance by the band and also a story of the man walking in New York city and scenes of the sky scrapers and the setting he is in and him waiting in the corner of the street which is what it says in the lyrics. The narrative makes the video more realistic and brings the audience closer to the music/ song. It lets them understand what music and lyrics better.

Another example is the music video called “so sick” by Neyo which is narrative built all throughout the video contains scenes of what it was like in his relationship, although the song is about a breakup. The video tells the background of the story and why the song was written. Other videos are concept built which involves cartoons of added special effects that just makes the video seem more interesting and stand out from the rest. It sometimes have hidden message which can’t be easily figured out just by the lyrics.

The mise en scene of the videos according to our research is; the setting is usually a studio or a stage if it is performance built, however if it is a narrative built, it usually takes place in the streets or any external area, it all depends on the song, for example, of it is a love song then it is likely it will take place in a restaurant or in the streets at night or maybe somewhere where you can see the sun-set, anywhere romantic.

The costumes and hair/make also depends on the genre of the song. Usually it would be a love song. The video usually involves the band/artist as the main characters in the video. The women are seen as the “sexy” slim beautiful ones, usually dressed in revealing clothes, whereas the men are dressed in baggy jeans, t-shirts and hoodies with big expensive looking gold chains on. This is mainly shown in an RBB/Hip-pop video. However in most videos, the female is seen a beautiful, and different. She is dressed beautifully but in revealing clothes, usually a nice dress, her makes up is perfect, not too overdone. The male is dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, also once again not over doing it.

Overall the forms and conventions of music videos are the genre; most videos nowadays are based on a love story. This is one of the main points we need to consider because or target audience is in a young age category, between 16 -30 years which are the years where people find love, so the audience will be interested in a love song. Another convention which we need to consider when making the video is whether it will be performance built, narrative or concept built. We believe that performance and narrative will be the best idea because it gives the audience a good understand of who the band/artist, revealed by the performance, and also the background of the story, revealed by the narrative.