Aimee Gayle Evaluation blog: 2012

Like any other art form, music videos have many different genres and therefore differing codes and conventions. For example, in a typical hip pop/r&b video the camera will often closely focus on the star, perhaps a sub-narrative, and likely a choreographed dance routine. The video is often set in a party or club environment and will feature scantily dressed women dancing as sex sells. An example of this is 'In Da Club by 50 Cent. In contrast, the rock genre tend to use eerie, sometimes shaky, live performance videos which show a band playing their instruments to create a 'raw' atmosphere. A prime example is 'Black Hole Sun' by Soundgarden. Pop music videos heavily focus on the artist, tend to be brightly coloured and appeal to a huge audience including children as the pop record label's intention is to sell a product in bulk by any means possible. An example of this is 'One Time' by Justin Bieber. Other conventions include;

long shots, close ups, extreme close ups
pans, dolly track shots, crane shots and tilts11
reaction shots, for the same reason as jump cuts
mise-en-scene to successfully represent society and the artist in the short duration of a music video. This includes; lighting (usually artificial to make a star appear flawless), props, costume (highly important for iconography of an artist), colour, sound
diegetic and non-diagetic sound

These conventions make it relatively simple when knowing what to expect from watching a music video of a certain genre.

I feel as if our music video challenges set conventions and is something quite experimental that hasn't been done before, which is why we did it. However it does also conform to some typical features that a lot of music videos contain.
These include;

lip syncing