Research & Planning: Conventions and genres of music videos.

Genres:

• Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
• Particular music genres may have their own videos styles iconography for example Hip Hop, Rock, Pop etc...
• Reference to voyeurism
• Intertextual references

Conventions:

• Lyrics: The lyrics establish a general mood, for example if it is a party song, a love song either being happy or sad etc... Key lines may only play a part of the visuals.
• Music: Tempo of track drives the editing
• Genre: reflected through mise-en-scene, themes, performances, cinematography, editing
• Cinematography: may move to accompany performers, or circle them, to create a drama. Lots of close ups to create viewer intimacy and emphasise voice
• Editing: generically fast paced, but slow paced could be used to establish mood
• Intertextuality
• Narrative and performances: suggest storyline leaving the audience want to re-watch. 

Camera shots: music videos tend to use many long shots, close ups and mid shots. This is used to show and emphasis the artists moods and emotions as well as the locations. Close ups help illustrate the words being said in the lyrics, giving more of an understanding to the viewers. 

Camera movements: Common camera movements used; tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots. 

Mise-en-scene: Showing the arrangement of performers and props on stage or on scene. Representation is important for this for example, the costumes reflect a certain mood such as dark, long clothing portraying a sad mood. 

• Lighting: Some videos tend to use black and white to reflect the mood of the song or some videos use a range of artificial lighting to create the opposite mood to what a black and white video would show.
• Sound: Commonly the vocals of the song are used however, in some cases some videos are turned into short films such as Michael Jackson's 'Ghosts', which uses 3 different songs as well as dialogue.
• Props: Props plays a huge role in music videos as it almost creates the music video and illustrates a clearer idea and understand of the video.
• Costume: Costumes help reflect the genre and mood of the music video and can encourage viewers to dress this way as an influential factor for example, red leather jacket from Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'. 

Editing: Jump cuts seem to be used quite often in music videos, this is because it allows a sudden change from one scene to the other. Transitions are commonly used also such as fades and dissolves as it helps create a different effect than cuts.