Codes and conventions of a pop music video

From analyzing music videos of other artists, its clear to see there are a few similarities between them. The females in the video show a very modern representation of women, for example, in the video for 'Hot n Cold', and the video for 'Tik Tok', both Katy Perry and Kesha are very powerful, independent and confident looking. This is very different to the traditional representation of women as its usually the men who have the power. Both videos are filmed on very sunny days, and the lighting is bright too so the videos look very colourful and vibrant, giving quite a happy feel. There are very few scenes, if any scenes at all in both the videos where only narrative is used. Both videos seem to combine the narrative & performance scenes so the artists are singing throughout the storyline. One difference is that while both videos seem to reflect the meaning of the lyrics (Andrew Goodwin) only Katy Perry's video uses the theory of equilibrium (Todorov).
Both videos use a lot of close ups, especially of the artist when they are singing which shows emotion.

I think in our video, we will use some conventions but won't stick completely to what we have seen. For example, I think we should do some filming on a sunny day, as we want our video to look quite happy. On the other hand, we are going to use some narrative scenes where no performance is used at all.

Kesha - Tik Tok

Kesha was listed as one of the most similar artists to Katy Perry on the last.fm website, so I decided to analyse the video for her song "Tik Tok" and compare it to "Hot n Cold". Like Katy Perry's video, the narrative and performance parts of the video were linked in together, but Kesha's video used a much more basic storyline. The video was pretty much about going out, having fun and partying, there wasn't really a straightforward beginning and ending. Similarly, the video for "Tik Tok" also used very bright colours, and the outdoor scenes were sunny once again. However, this video used black and white editing in some parts, for example on extreme close ups of objects and body parts. Both of the songs are upbeat, so the colours and weather almost reflect the feeling of the music. One very noticeable comparison between the two videos, is that both main characters were seen riding bikes. This could perhaps be seen as a deviation from tradition female representation, as physical activity and sport are stereotypically more associated with males.
The shots are mainly made up of close ups, mostly of Kesha's face but sometimes focusing on other objects. In parts, the video completely follows Andrew Goodwin's theory about videos being an extension of the lyrics, for example when the line "I'm talking pedicure on our toes, toes" is sang, a close up of her feet is shown, and at the end of the video, when the line "Now the party don't start til' I walk in" is sang, she is shown walking through a door into a room full of people. The camera is quite shaky which goes along with the lyrics of the song, as its about partying which gives a slightly jumpy effect to the video. Some of the cuts between shots are quite jittery which again goes with the theme of the lyrics but also matches the music of the song.