Conventions Of Music Videos

In Sum 41's 'In To Deep' the band members go to a diving competition at their local diving centre. The characters encounter rival divers and the competition begins. The music video seems to cut from performance to narrative on occasions. The rival divers get high scores for their dives and Sum 41 get lower scores. On the final dives a fan of Sum 41 distracts the rival diver. Meaning he gets a low score. Sum 41 then beat the rival divers. A lot of the shots in this music video are long or medium, so that the audience can understand the setting and see the amount of fans that feature in the video. Some shots of the characters in the air after attempting to dive are close ups on their faces to add more comedy to the video.

I believe the music video is targeted at teens and maybe older. There are not many transitions in this video they are just simple cuts. I believe that this video is narrative based but also features some performance. The mise-en-scene of the video is people having a good time in the summer, at a pool, even though they are 'In To Deep' The bright, clear blue skies reflect the weather and the atmosphere of the video.

The director of the music video has used comedy to make the audience enjoy the video more. Without the comedy values of this film, the content would just be people diving. The meaning of this song and music video is that when you're in 'deep' trouble you need to look on the brighter side of things.

''Cause I'm in too deep, and I'm trying to keep, Up above in my head, instead of going under'', these lyrics are metaphorically show when the characters dive in to the deep water in an amusing way and then swim to the top of the water. These lyrics mean that if their is a problem you should let it go other your head.

In Blink-182's Concept/ Performance based music video of 'All The Small Things' the band does parodies of other artists. They parody artists from Britney Spears to Westlife. The band wanted to make a music video that made fun of pop music and boy bands. This music video has reached up to 41,746,000 and counting views on youtube. The transitions in this music video are different from the ones in the 'In To Dee' video. In this music video there are a lot of jump cuts and fade tansitions. This reflects the pase of the song. Comedy music videos seem to be very common with Blink-182 and they are well known for them.

This music video is aimed at teens and older. This is because it has content that may be inappropriate for a younger audience. Almost all the shots are very similar to the shots of the music videos that they parodying. There are plenty of long shots to show them performing also. There is no real narrative to this music video, it is mainly just a concept. The settings of the music video is at a beach and an airport. These types of settings have been used in regular boy band video.




In Timbaland and OneRepublic's music video for their song 'Apologize' they perform in a studio. The majority of the music video is performance based, with small narrative scenes that fade in every so often. The short narrative reflects the lyrics. The setting of the narrative is a new years party and the character ends up getting kissed by a girl infront of the girl he who I presume he likes. The other girl then disapears from the party, leaving him with no one to kiss at mid-night. The moral of the song and video is, that somethings you can't apologize for.

The shots of the performers in the studio show the audience how well they perform in that environment. There are various close ups, mid-shots and long shots which shows the their performance. Fades in and out give off the effect that the singer is telling a story about what has happened to him. I believe the song and music video is aimed at all ages but the narrative content could apply to young adults and older. The clock counting down and the calenders help the audience understand what the setting is. At the end of the video the singer looks away from the camera and the shot fades to black, this may be to show that it is something he regrets.

Mise-en-Scene

Mise-en scene is a metaphor within film, television and music videos that reflect the meaning of the song. The characters, the setting, the type of shot all tell the story themselves, with or without narrative. Music videos are different from film as the story is not told by speech but by song, so the mise-en-scene is very important.

Shots, Transitions and Editing

The different shots and transitions depend on the tempo of the song and content. Short shots and quick transitions are used in upbeat music videos whereas lengthy shots and slow transitions are used in quite slow music videos. Transitions in music videos as well as films and programs are used to show the setting/character from a different angle with a cut or even show something that happening later on in the narrative with a fade or jump cut. Cuts are also used in performance/narrative based music videos to show both the performance and story simultaneously.