Genre

Definition: The genre of a music video is the style that is seen throughout. Depending on the genre, a music video will hold certain conventions throughout and will use the same elements as others.

• "Genre is no longer a fixed set of elements".

• Buckingham (1990) argues that genre is a "constant process of negotiation and change".

- Allows an audience to look at conventions and sort the text into groups.

- Genres are a bit like a recipe containing certain elements. This is often referred to as the grammar of the text. Hybridised/ hybrid texts.

-Genre contains a repertoire of elements that an audience expect to see in a media text of a specific genre.

Change of genre - Classic rock/punk

• Punk was only 2/3 minutes long
• Fashion changed, no clean appearance
• More drugs and alcohol
• Only 2/3 chords in the entire music video
• Not as much talent needed
• Lyrical content had changed

Why is the concept of genre attractive/useful to an audience?

- The audience are aware of what conventions to expect.
- The audience know what style of music video they are going to watch.
- Once knowing the genre, the audience can understand the ideas represented in the video.
- They understand the links that the video makes within the genre.
- It fulfils audience expectations.
- Genres are predictable.
- Create a 'shortband' means of communicating to the audience.
- Allows quick set up of character/plot.
- Yet needs a twist/innovation to avoid cliché/boredom.

Verisimilitude

• Yet some genres seen to have more verisimilitude than other - they seem more real - consider why a TV cop show is more real than a musical - e.g. what happens, what inspires it, endings, etc.

Pop videos

Camerawork

• Performers
• Zooms
• Lots of movement
• Pans/tracking

Editing

• Cuts to the beat
• Filters
• Saturated colours
• CGI
• quick cuts

Mise-en-scene

• Elaborate costumes
• exotic
• Distinctive setting
• High key/bright lighting-showing contrasts
• props-phallic imagery
• Actors are young/good looking/image of perfection

Performance

• Changed from basic performance to abstract
• performance is just singing, no showing of instruments
• Concentrates on the singer

Narrative

• Disjunctive videos - no link to the lyrics of the song