Screen Shots

The band shot is a stereotypical music video convention. Especially in rock genre videos band shots are used to establish each member of the band and what part they play in the group. In comparison to pop videos for example where the main focus in on the singer in order to market their assets the rock genre tends to try and balance out the amount of attention towards the whole band.
In our music video the set up of the band conforms to your typical bad set up which is used in music videos. That would be the drummer towards the back, the bassist and/or guitarist either side in the mid ground and the singer in the foreground. Earlier on in the stages of development towards our music video I looked at a rock band called 'VersaEmerge'. Looking at one of their music videos I saw the same band shots that we used in our music video, which are also used in the majority of rock music videos.

The shot we took through the lense of another camera is not your typical music video convention. Generally in music videos the footage will be taken using the main camera. However, we have chosen to challenge this convention by adding in another camera to our prop list. The reason why we challenged this media convention was due to the plot of our narrative.
Stereotypically a music video that is reliant on performance shots would not choose to incorporate another camera into the footage, however I think in terms of the production of our music video it worked into the narrative well.

The abstract part of our music video entailed us using projections, which displayed images onto our cast as a form of propaganda. This was our most powerful aspect in our music video. What made this element of the video so bold was because it is not commonly used, meaning that we were challenging the stereotypical conventions of music videos.
The images we chose to project had a meaning behind them and related to the lyrics of the song. A series of ‘brainwashing’ images were used on the band, which tied into the narrative we used. This isn’t a general convention that is used in most music videos.

This image showing a mid shot of the drummer was a typical convention used in music videos in order to show the individual members of the band performing either with their instruments or singing. In this case we were conforming to the codes and conventions of music videos because in the majority of rock videos each member of the band always has a good length of camera time in order to demonstrate their talent and also establishing their role in the band.
This was also a way of marketing the individual assets each band member has to offer. By doing this the target audience begin to decide which members of the band they prefer, for example a viewer who plays guitar may begin to idolize the guitarist in the band by watching their performance shots in music videos.

The narrative shot of our guitarist was a part of our music video, which played a role in telling a story or stating a message. Stereotypically, music videos will not always involve narrative but may be heavily reliant on performance or abstract footage. This means that we were challenging the conventions of music videos by including our own unique narrative, which will not be used in other music videos.
However, although the majority of music videos will not choose to include narrative, in the rock genre it is more likely that they will. In that respect you could argue that we were conforming to the codes and conventions of rock music videos.
The narrative in songs is rarely complete and often fragmentary, Steve Archer comments that ‘Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Sometimes the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time. ‘ In our music video we conformed to Archer’s ideology by directing our band members to be both a part of a narrative and performance shots.

This is another shot where we were using our projections on our cast members. However, we did not solely intend to use this convention for the purpose of telling a narrative. We also used the projections in terms of our abstract shots. Looking at this particular screen grab the viewer relates more to the artistic side of the music video.
Keith Negus explains that the repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo) in music videos is commonly used. In our music video we have supported this statement with the use of our abstract shots of projections, which are used throughout the length of the video.
We purposefully tried to keep the footage of the majority of our video dimly lit with subtle colouring. We did this so that when we introduced the projections the bold patterns of colour created a stylized effect that became a part of the video. In terms of this idea I would say that we challenged the codes and conventions of music videos, which stereotypically use stage lighting in order to create a bright clear frame so that you can pay more attention to detail.