Example: 1. Music Videos demonstrate genre characteristics...

Spice Girls- 'Wannabe'


This video, promoting the Spice Girls who were/are arguably the ultimate girl band, clearly demonstrates genre characteristics, such as:

• There are both individual and synchronised group dance routines.
• The individual group members breaking away and having individual moments where they are directly addressing the camera and performing with attention entirely on them.
• Lip-synching- though featuring in most genres' music videos, it is characteristic of the girl band/pop group to lip synch with no microphone or suggestion of the technical process of recording. The actual musical process is less important (generally) to these groups and their target audiences.
• Also recurrent themes such as fun and mischief making and female empowerment are genre characteristic of the girl band that can be seen here.

Slipknot- 'Duality'

This video, promoting a song by Slipknot, a metal band that are of a decidedly different genre to the Spice Girls demonstrates some clearly different genre characteristics.

• There is a big sense of a live performance, complete with all the equipment that would accompany this. This is a genre characteristic as the target audience for this group would be more into the musical process and probably seeing the band perform live.
• There is a far greater sense of realism with this video, reflected in the live performance and hand held camera style, that is common to this genre.
• Themes of chaos and anger/rage can clearly be seen here, that are common characteristics of this genre and the videos that accompany it.

Blink 182- 'All the small things'

I think this is a very interesting video in terms of genre characteristics of music video, as it is essentially mimicing and often mocking the characteristics of several other genres.

• This mocking and cheekiness is in fact characteristic of the playful, non-serious genre of 'pop-punk-rock' that Blink 182 conform to.
• When performing as 'themselves' they do so with the typical stage-style set up, including instruments, that is common to their genre. This is because their genre of music is also one that takes the musical and instrumental aspects more seriously.

Characteristics of other genres featured in the video:

• The boy/girl band- matching outfits (when leaving the plane at the beginning, and in the 'studio-performance' scene where they are wearing matching camouflage apparrel) are characteristic of this genre, as are the synchronised dance routines. Also the performances here are done so without microphones or musical equipment.