Genre Conventions

with Metal music videos it is very common to see a live performance video and very rarely is there any narrative along side the actual video itself, however if there is narrative it is usually mixed in with a performance aspect of the video, for example Blessthefall's music video for '40 days' has both of these and at the end both sides end up coming together and meeting instead of being 2 separate things, this is good because it concludes the narrative of the song and brings some sort of closure to the song.

 

the mise en scene for these sort of music videos is the stereotypical view of a modern day metal band, things such as ripped jeans, black clothing, tattoos, long hair, piercings and other various things are included to help the viewer understand who the target audience is, which in this case is usually from 13 year olds all the way up to 30 years olds however unless it is older metal you will rarely find that there are many older people listening to this sort of music purely because they haven't been brought up with it and aren't used to the new conventions and sounds that come with these new metal bands, as well as this all of these new metal bands are themselves within this range of target audience so they can directly appeal to their audience through their videos.

 

the editing within metal music videos is always fast paced and sometimes to the beat of the song, this is to portray the energetic vibe that comes with the live performance of metal bands, the artists themselves want to give a sense of what their live performances are like to those who maybe haven't yet come to a show or maybe cant make it to one, its all about making themselves look as good as possible through the cinematography and editing they use, and most of the time montage edits will be used, as there is no specific order to the videos, just a live aspect of it however this relates to most genres not just this one.

The cinematography used is usually medium shots to get an overall view of the band performing with the occasional close shot of fret boards or symbols when maybe a solo or specific drum beat comes on, this is to emphasise that part of the song and to build up an atmosphere for the view which makes them want to see the real thing, this is also used on the lead singer when certain words are wanted to be emphasised because if we only See this once is can mean that the song is based around those key words and it helps us as the viewer understand the songs initial meaning.

 

the lyrics within the song are usually reflected by the video that goes along with the track, for example in Attila's 'About That Life' music video they are talking about the rock and roll lifestyle that they live with day by day, this is reflected in the video because they are seen to be in and around a large house, with lots of women and nice cars and even then there is always a performance aspect to the video even if it appears only for a few seconds just to re-enforce the fact that they are are the band even though it is obvious, it is a very common convention to see in music videos of this kind, more so than seeing a narrative style video.