This document discusses codes and conventions in music videos. It defines codes as the established ways of creating meaning in a text, including technical, verbal, and symbolic codes. Conventions are commonly understood ways of doing things in a genre. The document instructs students to identify codes and conventions in various music videos, such as the use of purple pills in a D12 video, and to analyze how two videos in the same genre use codes and conventions to effectively promote the artist. Students are then asked to define codes and conventions on their blog and compare two videos, analyzing the codes, conventions, promotional success, and relative success of each.

1. A2 Media Studies
G324: Advanced Production Portfolio

2. Connect
• Have a look at the Purposes of music videos
on your cards
• Can you sort them into the order of
importance to a successful video?
• Think carefully!

3. Codes and Conventions
• Codes and Conventions are a really important
part of studying and producing Music Videos!
– What do you already know about Codes?
– What do you already know about Conventions?
– Are there any other Key Words relating to Codes
and Conventions that you know?

5. Codes
• Codes in a media text are the established way of
creating meaning in a text
– technical codes - all to do with the way a text is
technically constructed - camera angles, framing,
typography etc
– verbal codes - everything to do with language -either
written or spoken
– symbolic codes - codes that can be decoded on a
mainly connotational level - all the things which draw
upon our experience and understanding of other
media texts, our cultural frame of reference.

6. Codes
• In media studies, a message is often described as
being "encoded" from the sender and then
"decoded" by the receiver.
• The encoding process works on multiple levels.
• For semiotics, a code is the framework, a learned
and shared conceptual connection at work in all
uses of signs

9. Watch The Following
• These artists all use CODES in their videos:
– Can you identify them?
– What is the Denotation and Connotation?
– What do they mean to you?
• D12- Purple Pills
• Carly Rae Jepson - Call Me Maybe
• Christina Aguilera – Dirrty
• Tynchy Stryder & Dappy - Spaceship

10. Conventions
• Conventions are the commonly understood
ways of doing things in a media text
• Conventions are probably the easiest points to
use to identify the Genre of a media text

11. What is Genre?

12. Conventions
• The use of Conventions in a music video help the audience
to identify the genre of the song and the artist.
• This allows the producers of the song to “sell” the song and
the artist as the audience will recognise common imagery
quickly!
• Watch the following videos – what are the genres and
conventions used:
– One Direction - Kiss You
– Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way
– N’Sync – Bye Bye Bye

13. On Your Blog
1. You need to define the terms Codes and
Conventions – Use PEA and Images to help you
2. You need to analyse and compare 2 videos in
the same genre:
– Identify the Codes used
– Identify the Conventions used
– How successful is the video in promoting the artist?
– Is one more successful than the other? Why?