This document identifies several key conventions of music videos. It discusses 5 general conventions identified by theorist Andrew Goodwin including demonstrating genre characteristics, intertextual references, focusing on the female body, close ups of the artist, and a relationship between music and video. It also notes that rock/soft rock videos typically feature band performance, a focus on instruments, lighting reflecting the song's tone, and either a narrative or performance focus with less objectification of women. For artist John Frusciante specifically, his videos are heavily performance-based without narratives and rarely feature him on album covers which tend to be abstract and hand drawn. Ancillary conventions discussed include how digipaks are constructed, inclusion of booklets, magazine ad

1. Identifying
Conventions
Of Music Videos

2. General Video Conventions
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Theorist Andrew Goodwin states there are 5 key music video
conventions:
1.
2.
3.
Demonstration of typical genre characteristics
Can include intertextual references
Frequent references to the notion of looking and a voyeuristic
treatment of the female body
Often include close ups of artists, and the artists will have a visual style
that will span across all their work.
There is often a relationship between lyric/music and the video
4.
5.

3. Genre Conventions
My artist covers several genres, however the genre of the song is rock/soft
rock.
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Performance elements are essential to rock music videos. This also
demonstrates their actual writing of the song.
Focus on the instruments themselves
Lighting reflects the tone and mood of the song
Objectification of women is rare, more about the song as a whole,
music and lyrics.
Either narrative based or performance.

4. Artist Conventions
John Frusciante.
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No real narrative.
Very heavily performanced based - focusing on the music.
Never features on his album covers.
Abstract album covers, majority are hand drawn.

5. Ancillary Conventions
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Digipaks are often constructed of four main images for each section of
the CD case.
It is sometimes conventional to add a booklet inside the CD case
containing lyrics or some sort of imagery.
Magazine adverts are usually of A4 size and contain a simple design to
make it memorable.
Magazine adverts commonly link with the single/album cover they are
promoting, and feature the artists logo/typography.
There is always a tracklist on the back of the digipak, with a barcode.