SP - Albanian Music Videos

In our first lesson back from study leave, we started to look at the codes and conventions of music videos. However our media teacher decided to show us some Albanian music videos. This was because he wanted to see if our first ideas of the codes and conventions of music videos matched the Albanian music videos he showed us. 

Here is the first Albanian music video our media teacher showed us



As you can see this video does not follow many of the codes and conventions we had originally thought of. The editing was very slow and there was not a fast pace feel to it. This is due to the extremely long takes and a lack of shot variation which slowed the pace down even more which is the biggest problem with the music video. It is extremely boring to watch and doesn’t grab the attention of the audience. 

Here are the other two Albanian music videos our media teacher showed us





The key idea, which we hadn’t originally come up with in these two videos, was all about Globalisation. The goal of globalisation is to increase material wealth, goods, and services through an international division of labour by efficiencies strengthened by international relations. It describes the process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through communication, transportation, and trade. However, in many places around the world, major cities and small villages are being overpopulated by huge brands such as McDonalds and Starbucks etc.

SP - Codes and Conventions

During the first week of A2 Media Studies i have learnt a few key aspects of music videos. Just like in AS when we created our film opening there are key codes and conventions that are used in alomst every music video. Some of these codes and conventions are backed up by Goodwins theory. He said that in every music video there will be at least one of these three things:

1. Performance (The band or the singer features in it)

2. Narrative (A story to go with the band/singer)

3. Concept

Others codes and conventions include:

3. Alot of cut shots and not too many transitions betwwen shots

4. Very fast paced editing

5. Short takes

6. Male / female gaze

7. Lip syncing

8. Backing dancers

Some other things we had to consider in our initial thought was that we had to cover these three things:

1. Format

2. Audience 

3. Genre

SP - The Brief

At A2 I will be in a group of three and we will produce a portfolio of productions: a music video as my main text, plus a digipak cover and a magazine ad for the digipak. We will use HD Digital Camcorders and Final Cut to edit our footage which will ideally be 2-4 minutes long becuase the longer the video, the more work /shots/re-shots we will have to do. Although we have to stick to codes and conventions of music videos we have a creative freedom to make an original, eye catching video.