Rock Music Video Conventions

Rock music started in the USA during the 1950's emerging as an alternative to the usual Jazz and classical music, it was known as Rock and Roll.

Music videos are usually performance based as rock artists tend to want the audience to focus on the music rather than a story or commercial product. It may also be because rock bands will often want to advertise themselves and help sell live shows. Rock videos will almost always have a narrative and performance base to it. They will incorporate props, makeup and lighting into the video but only to help portray the songs emotion to the audience, it will often be dark and low key.

Extreme close ups are often used to help illustrate the artists emotion through facial expressions. As well as a wide use of establishing shots to show the band (which usually consists of multiple members). And a usual convention will be members with guitars playing with lots of enthusiasm and energy to show their passion for the music.

Mise-en-scene of a rock video will highly relate to the premise of the song so dark, Gothic and edgy. The clothing will be black, leather and be higlighted with metal and bones/skulls. This is useful iconography which helps relate the band to the genre.