Code & conventions of a pop music video
- 1. CODE & CONVENTIONS OF A POP MUSIC VIDEO
- 2. CONVENTIONS ■Bright colours ■Colourful clothes ■Make up ■Having fun – Partying/ Drinking/ Dancing ■Attractive people ■Loud/ Bubbly/ bold people These kind of music videos are made to look like a fantasy world such at Katy Perry with her song ‘California girls’. Katy’s music video is crazy and outrageous such as having things made out of candy and her being able to float in pink clouds with bright coloured hair which is a typical kind of music video with the genre of pop.
- 3. MORE CONVENTIONS OF POP More conventions of a pop music video is that it tends to follow the stereotypes of other videos, it doesn’t often have independent different music videos. Pop videos are normally one of the most heard genres of music on the radio such as kiss and capital, as they have a much larger audience than rock and indie music, which have a lot more unique songs compared to pop. Where as pop just carry's on the rhythm and contentions of another pop song. The genre of a song can be shown through the music video for example by the use of bright blood colours seen in another one of Katy Perry song Last Friday night.
- 4. HAIR AND MAKEUP CONVENTIONS In current day the hair and makeup in a pop music video is over the top and crazy such as massive hairstyles colourful hair foe example Nick Minaj in Super bass, this helps to fit the convention of a music video being over the top and crazy.
- 5. THE CHANGE IN THE PAST 10 YEARS However hair and makeup has had a dramatic change as crazy hair and makeup wasn’t used back in the day they kept it more minimal as there was no need to be outrageous but as there are lots of pop videos now. Artists now try to compete with each other to get the craziest pop video.
- 6. TYPICAL CAMERA WORK USED The camera uses a lot of close ups and extreme close ups in order to highlight the voyeuristic aspects of women as they are typically represented in pop culture. Examples of these would be close-up's of cleavage, lips and bums. Pop videos typically use ideas from the work of Laura Mulvey who said that women are purely used for sexual gratification or merely to interrupt the narrative, this is called the male gaze.
- 7. CAMERA MOVEMENTS Tracking shots and motivating editing are used throughout a pop video as the whole video is based around the artist to show they are the main focus in the video. Panning is also used when the artist changes around from scene to keep the camera on the artist.
- 8. REPRESENTATION Women in pop videos are represented in a negative way such as sex symbols rather than artists, which follows Mulveys theory of the male gaze. This continues through the rest of the artists life until they are classed as ‘too old’. An example of this is Britney Spears with her song ‘Hit me baby one more time’ she is dressed in a school girl outfit with a short skirt and her top rolled up to show a sexy school girl look which follows the representation of women in the music industry from 90’s. Before the 90’s there was less of a need to dress provocatively, where was today such as Miley Cyrus seem to be ‘forced’ into wearing more and more revealing clothes.
- 9. INTERTEXTUALITY This is the way one media text can refer to another and is about how music videos draw upon existing texts in order to spark recognition from the audience. An example of this is In the 1980’s Madonna’s video for ‘Material Girl’ drew inspiration from ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend; a film from the 1950’s. Another pop music video is Lady GAGA in her song ‘Paparazzi’ where she features real headlines and articles in her music video.