This document summarizes the conventions used in rock and indie music videos. It discusses how the student's music video incorporates many of these conventions, including close-ups of band members, shots showing the whole band performing, casual clothing, dim lighting that creates shadows, and a plain background setting. It also discusses how the student applied similar conventions to the design of their digipak and magazine advertisement for consistency across the media products.

1. Evaluation Q1
In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?

2. Goodwin’s Music Video
Conventions
1. The relationship between lyrics and visuals
(illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics
2. Relationship between music and video (visuals either
illustrating, amplifying or contradicting
3. Particular music genres may have their own music video style
and iconography (such as live performance in heavy rock)
4. The artist may develop their own star iconography in and out of
their videos, which overtime becomes part of their star image.
5. Likely to be reference to voyeurism (the act of sexualized
looking) This may explain the treatment of women within the
media.
6. Intertextual references, either to other music videos or films or
TV texts.

3. Rock/Indie Video conventions
Cinematography
Conventions shots in these types of music videos include:
• Close-ups of the lead singer/each band members
• Main shot of the whole band performing (Long/Wide shot)
• Extreme close-ups of the instruments and some part of the members like face
These all work towards showing off their music talent and the charisma of the band
Mise-en-scene
Editing
The band are usually performing in a studio, where
there is a plain background which makes the band the
main focus and stand out more.
The lighting is usually dark
The clothing is very much the same: casual, jeans and
t-shirt.
The editing in on the beat
and fast between moving
from different shots.
Our Music Video Conventions
We used a lot of these convention in our video. We thought that the convention
for this genre was very effective and simple to convey for ours. The shots we did
were conventional as we did lots of close-ups and many different shots of the
band and singer lip-syncing. Also the clothing was very casual.

4. For the rest of the
digipak, we put in
pictures of the band.
This is very
conventional of a
digipak as they have
pictures of the lead
singer and
sometimes all the
members of the
band which we have
done.
The pictures connect
to the video but very
subtle as they are
from behind the
scenes of shooting
the video
We wanted the ‘night’ theme we used in
the video for the front cover of the
digipak. I edited the picture to make it
more colorful and so it stands out better.
Usually the cover is something that
catches someone’s eye which I think we
got across.
Digipak
The name of the band stands out with the
colorful background and white font

5. Magazine Advert
We wanted our magazine advert to
have to same look as the digipak. This
is normal for a artist to have the cover
of the digipak for the ad as people can
recognize it easier.
We used the same fonts as the digipak
Websites addressees for more information
A normal convention magazine advert has
where you can buy the cd and the logo of the
record company which we put in.
Also we added a star rating which are used in
adverts a lot. This is to show who liked it and
make it more appealing to an audience if has
done well.

6. Whole band shot
Shadows
create an
interesting
effect
This is one of the main shots we did. It shows
the whole band performing together and
highlights the musicianship of the members
It shows a strong link between music and visuals
as shows the members playing the instruments
heard in the song.
Casual clothing

7. Used in other music videos
AAR- Used similar lighting techniques
and use of shadows and silhouettes
All use stage/studio as location –
plain background
Use dim lighting – lights on
the band members

8. Close-ups of Lead Singer lip-syncing
We did lots of different shots, lighting and angles
for the lip-syncing part of the video. We wanted
to make it look more exiting with more shots.
We used shadows throughout the video, in
which the lyrics and visuals link, as shadows
and ‘night’ connect. Also this is convention for
a rock/indie music video.
You can see he’s wearing casual
clothing, which is just a t-shirt.
Can clearly see him lip-syncing, which
illustrates the link between lyrics and
visuals

9. This is one of the pictures we used for the digipak.
It’s is a still from the video, which may not be very
conventional for artists to do as they would have a
photo-shoot for the album, however I think it still
works well and is editing to black and white so is
not so obvious as it could be a picture.
Used in other music videos
All-American Rejects
– Dirty Little Secret
Foo fighters – The
Pretender
All Time Low – Time Bomb

10. Individual band shots
We did lots of individual shots of the
other band members. This was
important as lots of videos show lots
of each person in the band not just
the singer, as everyone is just as
important.
Show their
musicianship
and talent
Lighting was behind creating a silhouette
Lighting in front creating shadows
We kept the conventions of the
lighting and clothing throughout all
the shots

11. Examples