Conventions of a promo
In a music promo there are lots of important factors that
need to be considered throughout production. Some of these factors become
established conventions and end up being used through many different videos and
genres.
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Dance-long associated with music dance can fit
perfectly into almost any video. The video which has long been said to use
dance to its best effect is Michael Jackson’s thriller this is a good example
of when a trademark has been made for a song as most everyone can associate the
dance with the song. It’s with a technique such as this that a song can become
famous through its music promo.
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Rhythm-even outside of a dance most things that
happen in music video are controlled by rhythm. A performer’s movement on stage
or in a performance piece are denoted by the beats and rhythm in the song.
Rhythm also affects editing and shot composition for instance cuts and fades
that sync up with the music.
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Narrative-most all videos use a narrative
relating to the song this is most popular among song’s about relationships such
as the scientist by the alternative rock band Coldplay.
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Performance-most videos feature shots of the
group or artist actually performing the song. This is prominent in rock videos
and usually occurs in certain places in the song such as during guitar solos or
certain bits of singing.
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Flashy editing and effects-many videos also use
certain strange effects in order to amaze audiences. This is used to great
effect by songs like bohemian rhapsody by queen who used strange camera effects
to create a strange and foreign feel for the audience. Another more modern
example of this might be the video blue by Eiffel 65 that used futuristic CGI
animation to create something new and interesting.
Of course many of these set conventions are changed from
genre to genre.
dance
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rhythm
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narrative
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Flashy editing and effects
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Performance
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Pop
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In pop dance is one of the most
commonly used conventions. This is due to the fact that most pop easy to
dance to and most pop musicians not playing instruments and merely singing
allowing them to do more than perform in videos
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Pop music is very reliant on good
rhythm and this plays a big role in the music video. In a pop promo the
rhythm affects the use of editing as well as most of the other conventions
such as the dance, narrative and performance.
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The convention of narrative is used in
many pop videos but a lot of them reject it depending on their particular
style.
For instance newer pop artists have a
tendency to stray from performance and narrative in favour of spectacle.
However most other artists tend to use narrative to tell a story through the
song especially if a story comes through in the lyrics.
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Pop artist love to use special effects
in music videos. Lady gaga for instance is fond of using picture
alteration(the effect used to make her eyes bigger in bad romance) and
strange costume to create strange effects.
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Since most pop musicians focus more on
lyrics and some don’t play instruments at all performance has always been
less important in a video than perhaps dance or spectacle. Most performance
based pop music videos feature their artists singing to the camera whilst
more interesting things happen in the background.
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Rock
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Rock does not use dance as heavily as
pop although it can be used most rock promos tend to focus on the band and
the music they play.
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Rock is also a genre that relies
heavily on rhythm for cues within the music video. However since there is
less dance and more performance the rhythm is mostly used to provide cues for
the editing staff rather than the actual artists.
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Rock does not make as much use of
narrative preferring to use spectacle and performance pieces to grab an
audiences attention.
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The editing in rock music is very in
sync with the song particularly for certain instances such as guitar riffs
and important lyrical junctures.
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Rock videos focus heavily on
performance wanting to show the talent of their artists as well as creating
an interesting spectacle for the viewer.
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Heavy metal
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Heavy metal uses almost no dance at all
in it’s videos due to it being a primarily very dark and edgy genre which
tries to avoid things that carry connotations of happiness.
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Although rhythm does affect metal again
it does not affect the themes or the artists themselves and serves as a
series of musical cues to edit the cuts and effects by.
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In heavy metal narrative can be hugely
important as most heavy metal songs describe a story. Also some death metal
bands have been known to do songs for the sole purpose of constructing a
narrative video on them.
Examples of this include the songs
“bloodrocuted” and “”thunderhorse” by the virtual band Dethklok.
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Heavy metal uses and editing style
similar to that of rock but is increasingly fond of big special effects such
as the use of CGI to create images that interweave with the lyrics and rhythm
of the song.
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In heavy metal as in rock performance
is incredibly important. Performance is used frequently to show the band in the
light of being performers for the audience rather than artists.
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techno
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Many techno bands use lots of dance due
to the nature of their music being very party friendly. Techno is a genre
that lends itself to dance due to having a lot of energy in the songs as well
as focusing mainly on the sound and not on words as most techno songs contain
very few.
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Techno is a genre almost completely focused
on rhythm and this is evident in techno music promos which are very fast
paced and sync up perfectly with the song.
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Although it can be used most techno
concentrates on the aspects of dance and song than on rhythm as most techno
song lyrics have no meaning or narrative interwoven into them.
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Due to being a genre with its
foundations firmly laid in the realms of computers, technology and looking to
the future techno has always tried to use special CGI effects whenever
possible to give their videos a more electro style.
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In techno since a lot of the music is
composed and edited on computer does not heavily use performance.
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