Codes and Conventions of A Music Video

The codes and conventions of a music video depend on the genre and mood of the song.

• The lyrics of the song influence what is shown in the video and often show a story to what is written in the song.
• The artist is often shown perfoming the song
• The pace of editing fits in with the pace of the music
• The dress codes reflect the mood and genre of the song, for example, if the song was a rock song you would expect them to be wearing clothes which are punky

The music video could be a simple performance video where it just shows the artist/artists performing the song or it could be a narrative video where the video illustrates the meaning of the lyrics for the audience. When making a narrative video, it is important that the story fits in with the mood and genre of the song. Some music videos could also be a mixture of both narrative and performance. Ilustration is what makes the music video realistic and understandable. Some music videos dont nesscessarily have anything to do with the song but work well as they are so creative it keeps the audience involved in the video, i think a good example of this is the music video for Justice - D.A.N.C.E. 

It is important that a music video has repeatability, meaning that the viewer can watch the video several times without getting bored. A good way to do this is to not make the music video too detailed and make the narrative more suggestive and imaginative. When making a performance video, a good way to create repeatability is to use varied camera shots at different angles to make the video more interesting. 

Mise-en-scene is also an important point to consider when creating a music video. This can be affected by the time period of the video and the genre of the song. For example many R'N'B songs are set in glamourous locations surrounded by money, well dressed people, expensive houses etc. Mise-en-scene is important for making the music video realistic and believeable to an audience.