Wednesday 14 December 2011

Codes and Conventions Of Boyband Music Videos

No matter how different the Boybands may be, most of the videos all follow the same codes and conventions which typically seem to appear in Boyband music videos. Below are some of the typical codes and conventions you would expect to see: 

  • " The Christ like gesture" - This can be seen as a way of boybands, showing extreme emotions towards the video, audience and song lyrics. - An example of this can be seen in Westlife's video for "Flying Without Wings " 
  • Another common feature is a girl/women is normally used in the video, preferably the girl would be who the band are singing about - This can be seen in our video by N'sync in the video for "Gone" and most of their other videos such as "Bye Bye Bye" . 










Most video only focus on one female, however Boyzone famously used a male love interest in their video for "Better" when focusing on Stephan Gately, this could signify his Homosexuality at the time, all the other members were focused around women in the video. 

  • To develop a dramatic effect, water can often be dropped on the band member during their videos, also for the sex appeal a target audience of women, the naked top half of the males body being dripped with water will attract their target audience. - This can be seen in Take Thats video "Prey"

More recently the semi naked feature for the male band members can be seen in parts of JLS video for "She makes me wanna". Where we see one member stood on a cliff, semi naked, with what appears to be an oily top half of his body, this can be seen at 0:26. 
  • Another common feature is the location, this most often is an abandoned place or a deserted landscape, an example of this could be a cliff top - This can be seen in Westlife's video for "What about now" and Take That's "Patience"
  • Slow motion can also be used in videos, in order to get across the "male gaze" as the slow motion is mostly focused on the women used in the video - This can be seen Westlife "Up town girl" when the girl take her bobble out of her hair, the slow motion is used to signify everyone is staring at her, focusing all their attention on her beauty. 



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