SK8ER BOI MUSIC VIDEO CODES AND CONVENTIONS

1. Performance - the singer / band are seen to be singing and playing (including lip synching), to provide authenticity, so that followers believe in the talent and can see their star. Record labels sign stars and promote them  to ensure sales. Avril Lavigne sings throughout the video using a mike and draws a huge crowd of fans around her when she jumps onto a car roof in the street. She sings with great passion, energy and conviction, holding the mike close to her mouth. Close-ups show her every word (lip synching is a feature of music videos.) She performs for her fans and for her 'boyfriend' the sk8er boi who features in the narrative. Screens often feature in music video and the sk8er boi is videoing Avril Lavigne as he gazes adoringly up at her. She returns his gaze as she sings about 'we rock each other's world'. The performance element creates authenticity (fans have proof of her talent) because we see her sing.
2. Star - use of close-ups, sometimes direct eye contact with audience, to build relationship with audience. The close-ups almost seem like she's looking at you directly as she sings about this story, telling YOU the story about this girl and this 'Sk8er Boi'. At the end there is a close-up of Avril where she looks right at the camera, speaking to the Sk8er Boi directly.
3. The visuals (what the star and other characters are seen doing) illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics (the 'story in the words'). Illustration = the visuals play out the story more or less literally; amplify = the words in the lyrics are only the starting point and the story develops in other directions; contradiction / disjuncture = the visuals do not interpret the words of the lyrics and may even show something contradictory. When Avril sings about the girl who turned down the boy sitting at home with a baby all by herself in 'five years from now' we don't get shown what she's talking about, we get told. The story is about a girl who refuses to go out with Sk8er Boi and Avril sings about the girl growing up and finding out that Sk8er Boi is now a rockstar, yet we never see anything.
4. The narrative usually features the performer in 'real life' situations but often with experimental types of film making such as hand-held, dramatic camera angles, symbolic codes and lighting. There is a lot of hand-held camera angles giving the impression that they are actually being recorded for a skater-type video. 
5. The visuals are usually cut to the beat of the music; the editing is often fast-paced; there is often use of montage, ellipsis and intercutting, stylish effects. In the opening, the music gets straight to the beat, with Avril's gang making references and putting up advertisements for her next gig in 'seventh street & Spring' at noon. It is all very fast paced with people running around as if in time of the music because it's fast paced with fast percussion and guitar.
6. Refrain - repeated chorus, sometimes with variations. The chorus is repeated multiple times and at the end it sort of ties everything together, bringing a satisfying end to the song.
7. Intertextuality - references to other media, films, performances, events