Video Music Promotional
Promotional Video
Moving Image
Codes and conventions of promotional videos:
- Genre:
“A genre is a division of a particular form of art or utterance according to criteria particular to that form. In all art forms, genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries. Genres are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.”
Wikipedia
Genre in music is basically the same as in films or TV shows. Michael Jackson's “Thriller” is a perfect example of a Horror/short film music video. It is about 13 minutes in length and is one of the best known music videos there is. It was directed by John Landis, Landis directed “An American Werewolf in London” just two years before hand.
- Content:
This is what's in a music video and how we see it. The music video can be entirely performance. Take for example the Arctic Monkeys smash hit “I bet that you look good on the dance floor”, this was all performance based using material from a live show. Other examples of different content would be G - Units “My Buddy” which was entirely C.G.I. You could also have a music video that is based on a storyline, for this I am referring back to the Arctic Monkeys and their hits “When the sun goes down” and “Leave before the lights come on”.
- Forms:
Widescreen, C.G.I. etc. These are all different forms of a music video. Form can give your music video that certain edge you need to get ahead of your rivals video.
- Information:
This is how we are told the story of the video. How we see it and how others see it. If it is told proper, then we will all get the same information from it, if not then different ideas will arise.
Identify and analyse styles of promotional videos:
Each genre of music has a different style to its videos. Different styles are broken down into straight, satire, parody, homage, surreal and montage.
- Straight:
This is a simple one take shot with nothing happening. A great example would be Bob Dylan's “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. It is simple, it is just a shot of one man holding cue cards with certain lyrics of the song on them.
- Satire:
It is an act to perform pure stupidness or follies. It is aimed to be just stupid, but they are always the best. A perfect example of this would be Eminem's “Just lose it”, which makes fun of Michael Jackson and his own movie “8Mile”.
- Parody:
This is when you take something that has already been done, but you twist it to poke fun at it. Bowling4soup's hit “Girl all the bad guys want” takes bits from a Limp Bizkit song and makes fun of them. It also makes fun of different rock groups like Slipknot.
- Homage:
This is a type of music video made to pay respect to people. There have been a lot of rap stars releasing singles with rap legends Notorious B.I.G and Tupac Shakur on them in order to pay homage to them, one major one appeared on an album Released by Eminem, it was made from Tupac Shakurs' unfinished songs with artists from today singing on them too. A popular song from that album featured both Notorius B.I.G and Tupac, it was called “Running” or “Dying to live”.
- Surreal:
Out of this world music videos. My Chemical Romance's latest video for “The Black Parade” is a great example of this, it was directed by Samuel Bayer. It's a futuristic video. It's based around a patient played by Lukas Haas, who is in a hospital bed dying, once he dies he sees the parade, he wonders through it and receives a medal at the end of the parade. The costumes in the video are so weird and wonderful.
- Montage:
A montage music video can be clips of gigs played or it can be photographs edited together. Shayne Ward's first video “That's My Goal” was a visual montage of his time in the hit reality TV show “The X Factor” It cut between a performance of Shayne and his performances going through the show.
Report on current practice in a chosen area of promotional video practice:
There was a time when music videos were getting more and more expensive, now these days they seem to be getting cheaper. Of course we still have the expensive videos but they are not as commonly made as the cheaper ones these days. Take for example Ok Go and there hit single “Here it goes again”, the whole video is 1 shot and a lot of choreography. The same with Will Young's “Leave Right Now”, one shot with a lot of action in the background. One of the most expensive video to be released recently was the Scissor Sisters and “I don't feel like dancing”, which is all Flash and C.G.I. The question is, will we, the next generation of film makers continue this cheap music video trend or will we jump back on to the expensive music video bandwagon!?!?!
We provide a professional essay writing service that thousands of our customers use as an effective way of improving their grades, improving their research and saving them lots of time.
