Conventions of a Music Video

Andrew Laird

Music VideosMusic Videos are a useful tool in helping an artist’ promote and sell their song. The videos can vary greatly depending on the individual artist and the music genre of which they are part of.The genre of a song, and whether it contains meaning will decide what type of video is created.

O Some videos contain the artists preforming throughout. Usually, they will lip sync the words but will contain a full performance of them standing there singing and sometimes may contain them playing instruments.

O Others contain some sort of narrative. This may involve using acting out certain parts to help tell the story and give added meaning to the lyrics. This will sometimes be done by the artist but occasionally a video may contain actors to do the visuals of what ends up in the video.

Music VideosO Some videos even contain a mixture of both performance

by the artist and shorter scenes of ‘acting’ to help portray meaning and bring out emotion in the audience.

O Some artists/bands use animations in their videos. This could be used as a constant thing throughout the video or just little short scenes intermingled with real footage of the artists’. This method is sometimes used to add humour to a video.

O Others use the artists/band in the narrative visuals for the video but do not perform whilst in them. The song is played over the top of the visuals. An example of this would be the Foo Fighters.

EditingThe editing in a music video is crucial. If an artist is lip syncing in the video, the editing must be done so that the track plays at the exact time of when the artist is lip syncing the certain parts of the song. If it is out of sync it will be easily noticeable. The idea is to get it perfect so the artist looks as though they are singing it there and then at the same time as the video is being performed.

The majority of videos use ‘cuts’ which will either be to a different angle of what is already on show or to a different scene. However some artists film the video in one complete take that involves no cuts. Sometimes the same camera angle is used throughout and never moves positions. This is the case in ‘Bruno Mars’ – The Lazy Song’ but also some artists film a video in one take but have the camera on rollers and move about as is the case in Taylor Swift’s video for her song ‘We are Never ever getting back together’.

Parody VideosThe aim of a parody is to turn an already existing song into something more humorous. The lyrics are usually changed and then a video is created to go with it. Parodies sometimes are created to take the mess out of an existing song, be that with the lyrics or the original video.

Although a parody song is all about the new lyrics and video, the key defining feature is the original song of which it came from. To enjoy a parody the audience should be familiar with the original song to make it more enjoyable. Whilst listening to the parody version, they should keep thinking back to the original and how it compares to the parody.

Parodies are commonly found on the internet. They rarely make it to TV viewing due to some of the nature of the songs. On the internet there is a massive liking for parodies as people wish to take time aside from whatever it has been that they were doing to add a little humour to their lives. Many parodies can be found on sites such as YouTube.

Weird Al YankovicO Weird Al Yankovic is a well known American singer/songwriter,

famed for his parody songs. O Generally, his songs have no reference to the original songs’

artist or lyrics.O Sometimes Yankovic will parody the original songs’ music video

or certain parts of the video when doing the video for his parody song.

O Some of his videos are performed by real life actors / himself while others are created using animations.

O Yankovic often gets his songs played on TV channels such as MTV. This is a big promotional aspect for him.

Weird Al Yankovic gets his songs played on TV, due to the stature of appreciation that he has built up with artists and fans over the years whereas most parody artists’ success is usually withheld to online hits on sites such as YouTube.

Weird Al Yankovic – White & Nerdy

O In this video Weird Al Yankovic mixes clips of acting to help tell the story of the song and gives an added dimension of the story in addition to the lyrics as well as having a sections of the song being performed.

O It is a parody of Chamillionaire – Ridin’ Dirty.O The song isn’t aimed

at mocking theoriginal,rather just a change of lyrics anda video to go withthe new parody song.

Other parody artists.O This is an example of the kind of variety of music parodies

found on YouTube.O The first is a parody of Maroon 5’s song ‘Payphone’. It is an

animated video. It carries a story to it that is aimed at taking the mess out of Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine for the fact the original song is about using a Payphone and that in this day and age why doesn’t he have a ‘cellphone’.

O The middle video is a parody from ‘Barely Political (The Key of Awesome)’ that is a parody of Kesha’s song ‘Tik Tok’, This parody uses acting as a way of help tell the story behind the song.

O The video on the right is a parody of Rebecca Black’s song ‘Friday’. The lyrics in the parody are about the 2 guys who created it’s lives and what they do and the video matches the lyrics to the song. They act and perform during it.

What have I learnt from other parody artists?

From looking at other parody artists on YouTube I have discovered that a lot of parody music videos use the convention of having the artists part perform the song whilst acting out a storyline that fits in with the lyrics.

For my parody music video, I will take up the same sort of technique. I will help tell the story behind the parody lyrics with the help of ‘acting’ out scenes rather than just stood there singing.