Codes and conventions essay

The primary form of any media text is to make money. Also to inform and educate people.

Genre is a type or category. It differentiates between one sort of text to another by the use of different codes and conventions. It helps create a choice and therefore a target audience for the producer if the text; consequently the audience expects to certain things within the text because of the codes and conventions the producer has created.
The same codes and conventions feature in all areas: camerawork, editing, character, narrative, theme, location, mise-en-scene and soundtrack.
In the early 20^th century Ferdinand De Saussure came up with linguistic analysis and consequently the theory of semiotics (the science of signs) in which you get given a signifier (a denotation) and it becomes signified (a connotation) these signs cannot be separated but they create a structure to help the way in which we communicate. He came up with the theory that when you hear the word tree the ‘signifier’ you automatically picture a tree - the ‘signified’ object. His theory applies to the media and therefore music videos because as an audience we can establish what is happening.
The genre I am looking at is the ‘alternative’ genre; which comprise of artists such as Florence and the Machine, The Blacks Keys, Eliza Doolittle and The Wombats. Each of these bands follows certain codes and conventions that feature in each of their videos. A code is when you get given an item then read into it, for example the settings used in the Eliza Doolittle video ‘Pack Up’ and in Florence and the Machine’s video ‘Rabbit Heart’ are completely dissimilar to an R&B/Hip-hop video.

Once the code (here the unusual setting) has been used over and over in separate ‘alternative’ videos it then becomes a convention that the audience will always expect to see when watching that genre of music.

Media language with the ‘alternative’ genre.

Within my genre, mise-en-scene is applied to Florence and the Machine’s ‘Rabbit Heart’ video in a very ‘unusual’ yet conventional way for the genre, for example- the video is set in the middle of a forest, the white floating clothing connotes innocence and a sin free personality. The props: a harp amounts to a peaceful and calm atmosphere; a table full of fruit is totally different and alternative and doesn’t particularly follow any kind of narrative. Finally the performers start doing a very strange dance in the middle of the video, again this connotes the alternative genre well. The main artist/character has red hair, but the others have white hair, suggesting that she’s more of a dominant figure than the others who are dressed in white and free from evil etc.
The cinematography techniques used with the genre-for the audience-creates a typical and expected unique and distinctive flair, for example there are many applications of close-ups, extreme close-ups, high angle shots, establishing shots, medium two and three shots, tracking shots, panning; the camera zooms in and out of focus/ fades in and out creating an air of mystery and unknown for the audience.

Now, looking at the editing and sound techniques of the genre; based upon Florence and the Machine’s ‘Rabbit Heart’ video there are applications of: diegetic sound- for example the harp at the beginning, lip synching-not just the main artist but all of the performers, this is quite unconventional but works well as it sets a eerie setting and robotic atmosphere, cross cutting for example around 1.30-1.45 where the characters are eating the picnic food thus generating a sense of real time. Rhythmic editing is used too; this is when the video is edited alongside the music so the narrative of the video becomes easily recognisable for the audience unlike in some ‘alternative’ music videos in which there isn’t a narrative and therefore an abstract performance is created in which there isn’t are story or theme running through the video at all.