Codes and Conventions of Selected Breif (Genre, Narrative, Media Language, Representation & Audience Theory Essay)

I have decided that I will work on my own and that I will produce a promotion package for the release of an album, to include a promo video, together with a cover for its releaseas part of a digipak (CD/DVD package) and a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

Punk rock is a rock music genre which developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other form of what is known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed excesses of mainstream 1970’s rock. Punk bands create fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped down instrumentation and often political, anti-bourgeoisie lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY ethic; from the artists and fans ‘cut and paste’ edgy individual clothing to the bands self-produced recordings and distribution through informal methods.

I will look a range of punk rock band's music videos and look at the different codes and conventions.

Cinematography

This video is a great example of what generalizes the cinematography across many different punk rock videos I have viewed. Throughout this official Sex Pistol’s music video, I have noticed that the video contains a variety of camera distances with lots of zooming in and close-ups; for example, to show Johnny Rotten(lead singer) cussing as he says the lyrics, the audience need to see this so they can feel the rebellious body language in his facial expressions, the whole message of bands such as the sex pistols is to say they don’t care about boundaries or rules and regulations in society because they’re anarchists. The dominant camera movement seems to be hand-held shots, this connotes the edgy punk rock culture to me. Extreme long shots and long shots are used to show the audience how they perform together as a band live on stage, but also more importantly as in other punk rock music videos the audience themselves are shown to broadcast the reaction they get from the music-the passion and madness the music brings to make the audience go insane.  Zooms and pans are included in speed to the music mostly throughout so the audience can see as well as hear how fast the beat of the song goes. Through my research I have also noticed many angles (high, low, Dutch) so I will ensure my music video uses a large variety angles, this shows to me how punk rock as a culture isn’t neat or straight, it’s diverse, up and down, upside down and side to side to show the utter craziness of the genre.

Editing

This music video like many other punk rock music videos is dominated throughout by cuts, editing wise. The video begins with establishing shots to show what and where the event within the video consists of, this is arranged in a bundle of these different shots with sharp cuts between each one, there’s no smooth edit. Cross cutting is used with scenes from Sid performing to scenes of the audience. In association to this I had noticed a shot reverse shot fashion to show the audience reaction for example the shock on a viewer’s face when he transcends from a classical style to punk. Shot transition is rhythmic, there’s rhythmic editing using cuts because it’s based on the song and the artists attitude (sharp and snappy) it seems to be especially edited to the guitar’s solo’s and chord varieties. Furthermore, most importantly the editor has made sure the artists lips are syncing to the song while he is performing throughout the shot transitions.

Sound

From research I have found that it is conventional in punk rock music videos to have the music diagetic so you can see where the music is coming from (live performance). But as shown in this Pennywise video and many other punk rock music videos the sound can be non-diagetic because the narrative of the song often links to footage from historical and ongoing tragic events. 

Conclusion
The punk rock is part of the rock genre. Modern rock music videos have more of a storyline to them in comparison to older fashioned rock music videos, examples include ACDC’s music videos in comparison to The Foo Fighters. Codes and conventions of punk rock music videos include eerie/weird videos, displays the band performing on stage, hand-held shots, usually no narrative (e.g. including war scenes or riots), dark/deep colour scheme, uneasy camera movements and usually no use of special effects.