Alex Jarvis A2 Media Blog

FEAR THE UNKNOWN are a Metal core band, and so I looked at music videos of bands performing their music to this specific genre. I looked at what typically occurred in these music videos – and so gained an idea of the ‘conventions’ associated in these. I went about this by asking the band members themselves for their views, asking friends who listen to this genre of music and so watch these videos regularly of their opinions, and also by conducting research myself by watching videos on YouTube.

Goodwin believed that there were 6 typical conventions associated within every music video, these are:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics; our video adheres to this in many ways, and I shall be showing this further down within the question.

2. There is a relationship between music and visuals; this convention is also displayed within our music video – typical ways in which this is shown is when the camera is looking at the performer who is predominantly playing at that time.

3. There is a relationship between visuals and lyrics; this is shown well in our video, with different lighting being used during different lyrics. For instance, when James (the lead singer) screams, the lighting goes dark.

4. Close up of artists; during the video we feature many close up shots of the performers. This is because we want to expose our members to the audience as much as possible (especially as this is a debut track) – this is a typical convention of music videos.

5. Reference to the notion of looking; our video features this convention once – and it can be seen in the free hand capture from over the shoulder of the drummer Callum. We did this in order for our audience members to feel more involved with the video.

6. Intersexual reference: in the video all of the members wore clothes that they would wear at their gigs. They also all used and played their own instruments which they would also use during these gigs, this was to give an identity about them and make them more recognisable.

Camera Shots:

In our video we decided to use a mix of fixed potion shots and moving shots. We believed that this would allow the band to easily be seen and recognised (fixed), whilst also keeping the audience interested, and reduce tedium (moving).

We also tried to use a lot of close up shots – in order to increase the coverage given to our members faces – and so make them more recognisable. We have seen this done in many videos of which we analysed, including BRING ME THE HORIZON - Blessed With A Curse.

Location and setting:

After looking at videos of Metalcore, we came to the conclusion that many are shot in indoor locations. We decided to use this convention for a variety of reasons, one being that it would allow the audience to easily recognise what they were watching, and also it would prove easier with logistics in terms of moving instruments. This would also help support our performance based theme (see later on).

Lighting:

During our video we experimented a lot with different non-digetic lighting, trying out common conventions such as reduced light and black and white, and more challenging forms such as ‘cartoon’. After reviewing the different lighting schemes we came to the conclusion that we wanted our video to stand out, and so chose the ‘Cartoon’ effect. We hoped that this would help differentiate our band from other similar bands in order to get noticed. We also used to lights behind where the band were set up in order to create a tempo and pace to the music to give it more effect.

Costumes:

The costumes that the band members feature within our video challenge the typical forms associated within Metalcore videos. The members are wearing clothing items such as shirts, jogging bottoms, and hip-hop t-shits. None of the members were wearing any items of leather– normally associated with metal performers. Once again we were hoping that this would help to portray our band as unique, and so help raise their profile.

Props:

The instruments that the band members used where the same that they use in their gigs, and so we believe this develops the convention in most metal videos. In videos we have looked at, most bands use the same instruments that they would use on stage, and so our band conforms to this. However we believe that we then further develop on this as we are not only using this idea to conform to a convention, but also to help people recognise band members more with the members and so help to increase the bands profile.

Music video structure:

When making this decision we always felt that we had to feature the band members themselves within the video, and should not use actors. This was because after watching videos of bands in their first years it was evident that this was always done in order to raise the member’s profiles.

We also had to consider whether I video would be performance or narrative based or a mix, and we chose performance. This is because the majority of the videos we saw were performance, and many of the narrative based videos tended to orientate around more established bands. It would also be easier for us in terms of filming to do a performance video, and so it was a fairly simple choice. We chose performance because of being easier as well as raising our bands profile to a greater degree.

Editing:

When editing our video, it was clear to see that we would need to conform to convention of Metalcore videos – that of fast paced editing. We were hoping to reduce the tedium of slow cuts, and keep our audience members interested and interacted within our video – to create a more lasting effect from which they would remember. We also conformed to the form of cutting sequences every 4-8 beats, in which the majority of the music videos do.