General Conventions of a Music Promo

Camera Work

•  Close-ups of instruments/peformers.
• Shots to show that the band can perform by cloe-ups of them singing or playing instruments, highlighting their skills (musicianship).
• Movement creates interest
• Lots of different perspective shots, showing the audience as well as showing the band.
• Performance to the camera, selling the idea of going to gigs and seeing the bands perform live.

Narrative/Performance

•  Often strong link to the lyrics in the narrative of the video.
• Bands are more performance based (Live gigs) whereas solo artists are more likely to have glamorous videos.
• Narrative of video leads to repeatability, people want to watch it more than once.
• Narratives are often quite complicated meaning that repetitive viewing of it means you may see something different every time, making it memorable.
• Intertextual references to add interest and make the audience feel like they are 'in the know', therefore they understand the story/concept whereas some people may not.
• Don't use traditional narrative so therefore there is not necessarily as start, middle or an end.
• Some artists create concept albums where each song in the album adds up to create a story and paint a picture for the audience.

Editing/Editing Effects

• Cuts between shots, sticking to the beat of the song, giving fluency, pace and interest.
• Genre of the song dictates the pace of the editing, e.g heavy metal - chaotic pacing.
• Clever special and visual editing effects very common in modern music promos.
• Use of green screen, making videos cheaper to produce due to no need for location filming.

Mise en scene

• Instruments (Mimed) showing that they're credible performers and gives sense of realism.
• Location tends to match the lyrics and genre of music.
• Stereotypical representations of setting.
• Costumes link to genre (Pop = Glamorous, Indie = Run-down and casual)  
• High key lighting, lots of unnatural lighting for effect and highlighting key performers and scenes.