Genre researchHeavy Metal (often referred to as Metal) developed in the late 1960s early 70s. In the late 1980s the genre was reabsorbed by new genres and by the early 90s the majority of Heavy Metal had evolved into other rock genres like hard rock, grunge, gothic rock, thrash metal and many more.

The target audience of Heavy Metal is usually early teens (13/14) up to 30 and usually doesn’t exceed 30, however more and more older people are still listening to heavy meta as they are from the Heavy Metal based generations. Reasons for this is the nature of the music and the year the music became popular, most older heavy metal bands had a target audience of young males but nowadays there are bands which are based for females and for older generations of people. The adrenaline packed music and videos are one of the many reasons why they have become such a wide genre of music.

General video conventions

The editing in most heavy metal rock videos is fast paced which helps to amplify the beats of the music, the quick cuts between a variety of different shots helps to portray lots of aspects of the band and the narrative. The use of slow motion is also a major aspect of the heavy metal genre, the idea of smashing things or throwing things to watch them break in slow motion is quite popular in videos, this can also be said for putting water and dust onto drum kits and hitting them in slow motion as it breaks up the fast paced tempo and makes the videos look more artistic.

Camera angles are used throughout to a wide extent, there are generally lots of different types such as high and low angle shots with a majority of medium close ups and extreme close ups being used to point out key bits of information or to show the singers face. There are no long shots from the same angle in the music video as they are boring to watch and don’t fit the theme therefore my video will have to have lots of different shots in each group of narrative to give the same effect as the other music videos.

Generally speaking most of the filing locations consist of either concert stages or warehouses to give the heavy metal effect. In songs that have narrative they tend to use disused factories or buildings, hospitals and forests to create their themes. These are filmed on at both daytime and nighttime to give different effects with projected light.

Fashion stays the same for most bans, black clothing of any sort for both sexes as well as ripped jeans with the occasional suit and tie event to portray power through the singer. The bands might wear masks such as Slipknot members with other accessories such as chains or combat boots depending on the theme of the video.

Makeup wise, most band members wear it. Both male and female heavy metal singers tend to wear makeup to show their individuality form the band members but also because they like to and it represents heavy metal music. The singers usually wear eyeliner with body paint drawn into other patterns or over their arms with different coloured eyeshadows depending on what band they are in.

The band usually have shots of themselves performing throughout the video with close ups on each individual player and their instrument to show the audience what everyone is doing, they all tend to dress in their bands style in each of the videos to keep the theme consistent, but to generalize they al tend to wear something black with other things added to it for example certain players from motionless in white are well know for wearing hats or even cloaks when hey perform live and in music videos.

Most older heavy metal songs don’t tend to include a narrative aspects as the whole point of the music videos were to watch the band preform or to see them live. In more modern heavy metal, there is a bit of narrative in dome of the videos either though little snippets or as the band is performing them whilst playing. The narrative aspects usually tend to follow the lyrics or try to amplify what is being said, if they don’t then they generally create them around certain themes such as love or loss of love, mental health or being insane in an asylum or having somebody being killed etc. but they try to base them around what has happened to band members.