Music Video Genre Analysis

Genre is a set of characteristics recognised by the audience:

In our case this involved meeting and developing conventions of music videos, with similar or completely different music styles. 

We believed that genres exist and that conventions are in place to define a certain genre, therefore we disagree with Robert Stams theory about genre. 

A relationship between audience and producer minimises risk of financial failure:

We placed in intertextual references to other successful bands e.g. Led Zepellin and Foo Fighters, this allowed us to appeal to our audience, increasing the like ability of our product and so reduces the risk of not making enough money from our video.

There are set are a set of rules and vocabulary:

Lead singer has more screen time  compared to rest of the band which makes him identifiable to fans. Band are seen performing the song to give audience an idea of their live performance. Band wear clothes similar to that of other bands of the same musical genre making them more relatable to the audience. 

There is familiar and unexpected as well:

There is a basic narrative featured in our music video which challenges the existing conventions of the music video genre, as most music videos of a similar music genre do not contain any narrative at all. 

We used intertextuality in the bands clothing which challenges other conventions as most artists are more focused on promoting their own clothing and style instead. 

Meeting expectations of the audience:

During our video the message from the lyrics of is shown during the action of our music video, which meets the audience expectations as they expect to see a clear message and understanding from the artist.

You can also clearly see the band performing which  meets the audience expectations as they expect to be visually entertained as well as auditory.

Genre offers comforting reassurance and closing down of complexities of life:
Our music video does not offer this at all, mostly thanks to the narrative which makes it relatable to a large amount of the audience and so therefore makes it think that it could happen to them, although this may potentially make it better as it would be more long lasting in memory of the viewer and so making it harder to forget.

Genres work through important cultural myths and fears by repetition, innovation and resolution:
In our music video the cultural fear of ghosts and haunting and during our video we see the character being haunted many times throughout, however our video challenges this to some degree as there is no actual threatening or scary movements that you would normally associate these fears with. For the resolution the band as ghosts simply dissapear as if on a cliffhanger leaving the audience wanting to know more.

Genre is defined by the effect it has or by its content:
I think it would be more suitable to class our music video by its content rather than its effect, because in a music video I believe the music is more important than visuals and so the viewer may be more effected by that than the visuals. Also the content of music videos can vary even between music of the same genre and so defining it content and make it much easier to identify individual songs and artists. For our video the content was kind of like a thriller, however the bright light and colours and  the fact that their wasno actual deaths or conflict involved, meant that  the video did not really meet the conventions of a typical thriller.