Purpose and Conventions of Promotional Music Videos

The purpose of music videos tends to be to sell the song by eliciting a reaction that causes the audience to remember the track. As well as to entertain, another purpose is to present a better understanding of the song and show meaning through visuals. Promotional music videos also are created with the intention of selling CDs and expanding an artist's profile as the video markets the band.
These videos usually contain many long shots, close ups and mid shots which are supposed to create emphasis on the emotions, the artist and location. Close ups can not only be used to better explore one's emotions but also to reflect the song lyrics by the movement of the actor's lips. The movement of the camera is meant to follow the artist or band. Many movements used in music videos include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots; which we do not plan on using as the cost is expensive and difficult to set up, not something we would be able to do as school students working on a project. This is more for record labels willing to pay a lot of money for the creation of their videos.
Mise-en-scene is another important convention of music videos as the placement of props and actors on the stage or set is what creates meaning, as well as lighting to add emphasis on certain people or objects and adds importance to specific parts of the set.
Within editing jump cuts are typically used as it allows sudden change from one scene to another. Fade and dissolve transitions are also serve as popular choices within music videos as they add a more diverse transition than simple cuts.
Andrew Goodwin made very valid points as to what is important within music videos. He said the relationship between the lyrics and visuals need to match, meaning the images serve to represent the lyrics. He also said the tone and atmosphere of the visuals reflect the words used, related to his first point about the lyrics and visuals, meaning all aspects of the video are required to relate to one another for a memorable and well made video.


Overview of coursework tasks

I will be using this blog to document my A2 G324 media studies coursework where we are required to create an advanced portfolio in media. We need to create a promotion package for an album release which includes an album cover we choose to design, a music promo video and a digipak which is essentially a type of packaging for CDs made usually from cardboard with a plastic holder for discs. We also, in addition to that, need to create a magazine advertisement for our digipak. This blog will serve as a record of my research planning and production.