Conventions of the Pop Promo

Technical Conventions:

- Band shots, whole band shots and performance clips – Advertising the band
- Shadows, mise-en-scene reflects atmosphere, focus on the most well known band members

- High lighting
- Bright lighting
- High angle / low angle, Special lighting effects
- Close-ups / Extreme close-ups
- Animation
- Colour effects – often monochrome
- Mainly straight-cuts
- Faced paced edits
- No real sound effects
- Dubbed Sound
- Zooming in / out
- Panning
- Montage


Narrative

- How is narrative used? – Balanced with performance? Cut into performance? Merged with performance?

- Does it amplify the lyrics? Does it focus on a specific part of the lyrics and illustrate it? Does it contradict the lyrics?

- Narrative might not be constructed in a typical narrative- It may be partial or disjointed


Intertextuality

- The process where one media text references another, it can be a carbon copy, a pastiche, a parody or a homage.

- This borrowing of images, narratives and reconstructing them can be seen of ‘post-modern’.

- Examples – Robbie Williams copies Kiss in ‘Let me entertain you’, Eminem references many celebrities ‘We Made You’


Textual Analysis

- Glamour, Rockstar lifestyle
- Mean and moody men
- Seductive poses from female artists
- Anti-establishment activity
- Deserted locations and straight-forward narrative (sometimes!)
- Guitar solos
- All playing to the audience
- Short skirts and cleavage
- Trying to portray a certain character
- Voyeurism
- Urban Locations
- Dancing
- Crowd Shots
- Destroyed Environments

Encoding & Decoding

Rock
Guns ‘n’ Roses
Paradise City

- Live performance show the thousands of fans
- Sunglasses suggest tropical warm weather, associated with holidays.
- Casual and ‘rocker’ dress sense is typical of the genre of music

Encoded

- Dress Sense – rocker, long hair, unkempt, Black
- Guitars, Head banging, High Energy Performances
- Lifestyle is busy
- Famous but have kept their roots

Decode

- Rebellious, Big performance for their fans.
- Enjoying their lifestyle
- Carefree personas

Signifiers
- Guitars, Instruments
- Load music

Signified
- Band
- Rock, Rebelliousness, ‘epic’

Conventions
- Smoking, drugs
- non-conformist lifestyles
- long hair, anarchy, youth, rocker fashion
- dark undertones, death



Pop

- Heartbreak, Relationships
- About the singer; not about the instruments
- A narrative to drive it

Encoded

- Relationships

Decode

- Unhappy / Melancholy

Signifiers

- Unrest
- Negative Body Language

Signified

- Distress / break up

Conventions

- Heartbreak, relationships
- Singer is the centre of the song

A Brief List of the Conventions of the Music Video

Music Video Conventions

• Representation – Woman/Men – Sexualised
• Band / Performance
• Publicity – “an advert” – band = product
• Close ups
• Narrative
• Lifestyle glamour/rock ‘n’ roll
• Access to the band
• Credibility – musicians
• Editing matches the tempo of song
• Mixes narrative and performance
• Repeatability – shown many times

This is just a basic list of some of the typical conventions. Many music videos make use of many more to properly convey their message to the viewers.