Codes and Conventions of Pop Music Videos

Pop videos have many conventions of what people expect them to be like. The majority of the public expect pop videos to be bright and colourful also full of different flashing lights. The music video is full of close ups to show the cheerful and upbeat emotions. Although in Rihanna’s Where Have You Been music video, the close ups are of Rihanna’s face. The main eye catching close up is of Rihanna when she appears out of the water at the beginning. This is used to show her emotion of what is happening and how she feels in the situation.

The majority of Pop music videos are very bright and eye-catching, also using lights or paint to make this convention possible. There tends to be a lot of extreme close ups these tend to show the purity and innocence in the personality of the artists. This is shown in Nicki Minja music video of Starships the whole music video is made up of extreme closes up of Nicki Minja on a beach or dancing along to the song. In every single close up of Nicki Minja she is either wearing something different or her hair is a different colours. From just this music video you can see that she is very creative in what she looks like. Another convention Pop is that if long shots are used to show the artist as one with a sexual appeal. Many of the Pop music videos that use long shots are like the viewer is seeing through the artists eyes when they are singing the song.

Codes and Conventions of the Indie Folk Genre!

There are a very wide range of music genres and with that genre there are particular codes and conventions that the music genre follows in their music videos. I have decided to analyse the codes and convention that fit in the genre of Indie Folk.
Some Indie Folk artists include:

• Ellie Goulding
• Iron and Wine
• Bon Iver
• Birdy
• Ben Howard
• Mumford and Sons

I have decided to choose two music videos from two of the artists mentioned above. I have decided to choose the songs "Shelter" by Birdy and "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons. From these two videos I will summarise what the typical codes and conventions are for the Indie Folk genre.
Below are the two music videos.



The typical codes and conventions for this genre are:

Camerawork:

• Close Ups of the Artists face and there body parts (Hands, face etc.)
• Long shots of the artists in motion or play instruments
• General shots of artists playing an instrument
• Tilts used often
• Scenic shots of the location (Forestry, interior design etc.)
• Establishing shots are used to determine the setting
• Positioning of camera is quite often facing the light so it creates almost a negative of the artist with the background being a positive

Mise-En-Scene:

• Varied lighting shown through either ambient lighting or the use of fairy lights/lanterns
• Depending on mood set by song the lighting matches (Mumford and Sons song is upbeat so the lighting is warm, whereas the Birdy song is sadder and haunting so the lighting is cold)
• Setting is very picturesque and scenic
• Clothing matches the setting nicely can can help the viewer determine the season.
• Clothing is very natural and normal which stand out from other genres such as pop as they normally are all dressed up

Editing:

• Shot duration  depends on the pace of the song (Birdy song is slow tempo so shots are longer, whereas the Mumford and Son's song is fast tempo so the shot duration is shorter)
• Soft Focus is used very often mainly on the artists faces, bodies and the setting
• Fade to Black is used at the end of the music videos

From finding out the above conventions it will make it easier to decide whether making a music video to an Indie Folk song would be easy and also give me a better understanding of what goes into a music video and how similar music videos in the same genre are.

Pop Genre

Pop music was first established in the 1926, but later became official in the 1950's deriving from rock 'n' roll. As a genre, pop music is put together with different elemnts from different styles of music; for example: latin, rock, country and dance. The term pop music was first short for "popular music" but soon became a genre of its own.

Characteristics of a pop genre are:

an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology

an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities

an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance

a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments

much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms

These are some examples of pop songs:

Love146- Little Bird was a song played through loud speakers in trafalguar square in 2011 and put to a dance routine performed by a "Flash mob" with West End Stars.

The Beatles- Help! was recorded in 1965 on to a cassette tape, calling their album HELP! As times went on, Help! became a number 1 selling single.

Bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_music

Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwins theory/type of music videos

Animation Video

Backgrounds for Animation

This is the first background for when Woody is sat in the frame, this is the main background used throughout until it is changed to the sunset background for the ending.

Shot List!

Story Board

Character Ideas

 

We came up with an idea that we could use Woody which is a toy to play the guitar to go with our song. 

 

We could use the idea to set him out as if he is telling a story but sitting on a box.

 

We would use pieces of paper to represent the grass that could move in each clip. This will be challenging as we need to make sure that it always moves naturally rather than looking animated.

When the lyrics come up with "if i was a tree growing tall and green" we would draw different trees and show them growing behind him. This will also be challenging as we need to make sure it is done in a slow motion rather than too quickly. 

Ideas Mind Map

9-Shot Analysis: Noah and the Whale!

Our chosen song is All I Want is You by Barry Louis Polisar, the genre of music is Indie Folk and when comparing to another song of this genre I chose to compare it to Noah and the Whale's song "5 Years   Time". We were asked to take 9 different shot types from the first minute of the music video. The music video was very simple and did not offer a lot of shots to chose from in the duration of that minute.

Below is the Eight shots that I chose from the music video.

All of the shots from the music video were very literal and everything that was spoken of in the song, for example one of the lyrics are "Ill put my hands over your eyes but you'll peek through" and as shown in the 6th and 7th shot its literally showing the man putting his hands over the womens eyes then showing her peeking through his hands.

Also the shots are very alternative and unique to the video as shown in the last 2 shots of boys in scout uniforms dancing. Another thing that I noticed was the colouring of the video is almost faded and not very vibrant. Also starts with an textual introduction naming who the band is and what the song is called which seems quite unique to this genre of music.

Nine Shot Analysis of Newton Faulkner- UFO

UFO by Newton Faulkner is, what i thought, a good comparison for the genre of Indie Folk and the song we are going to use for our animation, but also it is useful to see what type of shots we need for our own creation.

The shots used in these 9 sequences are all taken in London and are all either long shots or close ups either including groups of people doing the dance actions as him, or himself playing the guitar in really obscure places, for example: the subway.

The good thing about this music video is that it involves the public getting in to the video with his props   for example, there is a child wearing an alien mask which shows that he thought more about the public and people who are different rather than himself.

Nine Shot Anaylsis Of Mumford & Sons- The Cave

Above is the first 1:00 minute of the video of The Cave by Mumford & Sons.

Animation Song Choice!

In choosing a song to create a 1:00 minute music video with iStopMotion, we all chose a different song that we would prefer using for our music video. Some of our choices included:

Payphone by Maroon 5
Uninvited by Louise Dearman
Rise up by Yves Larock

However we decided that we would prefer a more light hearted song that was fun and we could play around with. We chose the song All I Want Is you by Barry Louis Polisar from the opening sequence on the movie "Juno". This song is in the genre of Indie Folk. We chose this song because it's catchy and is very happy.