Genre Theory & Conventions

As we all know there are different genres of music, but are there different genres of music videos?

We began by looking at how you categorise films, these are some of the ways we thought that films were categorised:
-by the narrative

-the setting

-age/target audience/rating
-production company

-style

-by their directors (auteur)
-by their actors/actresses

We then began to think about why we have Genre any why its so important? we decided that the main reasons for having Genres are:

-for the producers to help give them a template
-for the distributor to provide assumptions and help with marketing

-for the audience it is a label that identifies likes or dislikes

Following on from this we then looked to see if music videos and certain conventions that they conform to, especially for different types of music genres.

The Prodigy - No Good

Calvin Harris - Acceptable in the 80s

In both of these videos we see some common conventions for the Dance genre:

-both have dancers
-no complicated choreography
-no narrative
-simplistic concept
-random and crazy

However their are some differences:
-in acceptable in the 80s there is more use of colour whereas No Good is in black and white.

Some other common conventions we have discovered are:
Rap/Hip Hop
-images
-close ups of artists
-materialistic
-life style

Pop
-inter textual
-being heroes
-big budget
-sexy

Indies
-cuts to beat
-plain background
-focus on the artist/whole band
-low budget
-bright colours

Finally some quotes on Genre:
"the same text can belong to different genres in different countries or times" (O'Sullivan et al. 1994)
"satisfaction is guaranteed with genre; the deferral of the inevitable provides the additional pleasure of prolonged anticipation" (Knight 1994)
"genre is not...simply 'given' by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change" (Buckingham 1993)