The key to this Music Video concept is camera movement: the camera continuously tracks to one side, generally with no Jump Cuts, creating the impression that the scenes are on... um, a conveyor belt. The scenes themselves are often "slice of life" type settings or mockeries thereof, usually in a dollhouse-like set with literally No Fourth Wall.
Obviously, some film splicing is needed to create the illusion of nonstop camera movement. Sub-Trope of Tracking Shot (a long camera shot) and Truck (horizontally moving the camera without rotating it). Sister Trope of Seamless Scenery (a scene shifts between two locations via the movement of characters/objects).
Not to be confused with the Treadmill Video for "Here It Goes Again"
by OK Go.
Examples:
Music
- Gregory Abbott: The music video of "Shake You Down" is a collection of sliding shots of (mostly black) people engaging in various activities (such as dancing or waking up) or merely staring at the camera. They are interspersed of similar shots of Abbott singing.
- Sabrina Carpenter: The music video of "Thumbs" is a continuous shot that follows Sabrina and the passengers of a subterranean train. When Sabrina is off-screen, the camera focuses on the passengers as they sync-lip one of the song's stanzas. When it stops, the camera goes out of the door, pans to the people there, and then gets back.
- Crowded House: In "Don't Dream It's Over", as the song picks up, the vocalist is shown through sliding shots of him in different rooms. There's a filming camera roll at some point, lampshading it. It's a downplayed example because, mixed with the trucking shots, there are regular shots.
- Miley Cyrus: From her Disney era, "Start All Over" is a Oner of Miley dreaming about vibing with everyone in her neighborhood. The camera goes back from her to her backing dancers having fun. There are some orbital shots and tilts mixed in too.
- DAY6: "Breaking Down" features several overlaid and vertically tessellating, glitched-out shots of the band performing.
- Devo: In "What We Do", the camera quickly pans to different scenes that are all apparently taking place in one circular room. It's shot with a camera rig that actually does have the ability to rotate 360 degrees. They've also made an "interactive" version where you control the camera by clicking your mouse.
- Everclear: In "Everything to Everyone", instead of panning, the camera just rotates, with cuts every cycle so the group of people changes.
- Feist: "My Moon My Man" is a literal example of this, being set in an airport at night (Pearson Airport, in Toronto). The vocalist is shot walking, standing (while people pass by her), dancing, and moon-walking on a conveyor belt as she sings. When she runs out of conveyor belt, she changes directions but the camera never leaves her.
- Fleetwood Mac: In "Big Love", instead of tracking sideways, the camera trundles steadily backward through several spliced scenes.
- John Fogerty: The video of "The Old Man Down The Road" starts with Fogerty uncovering a small amplifier in the middle of nowhere. The camera slowly follows the very long amplifier cord outdoors past several rural slice-of-life scenes. At the very end, the cord leads to... a guitar John Fogerty is playing.
- The Front Bottoms: The video for "West Virginia" shows a house party shot with a Fish-Eye Lens that has the camera moving seamlessly from room to room, though the apparent location of things in the house changes with time.
- Genesis: During performances of "The Carpet Crawlers" in the 2007 Turn It On Again tour, a video of pictures and film footage from throughout their career as a band scrolls behind them. Can be seen in the concert DVD, When In Rome.
- The Grapes Of Wrath: In "All the Things I Wasn't", the camera glides through different rooms, each containing a member of the band playing their instrument. Played With, as there's some rotating and lingering involved.
- Halcali: "Tandem" uses the conveyor belt to allow for multiple exposures so that the band members can be in several places at once.
- Honeymoon Suite: In "Feel It Again", there are several scenes in which objects appear as if on a conveyor belt. First, dining room props (table, chair, window, etc.) and a girl prop glide directly where the singer is seated. Then, the singer and a dog are seen running without actually advancing while urban props slide in the background.
- INXS: The MV of "Need You Tonight" opens with a collage of sorts of the band members (or their body parts) playing their instruments or posing. The collage slides through the screen without the camera moving, so to speak.
- Jamiroquai: In "Virtual Insanity", it's not a conveyor belt per se but everything in the room is constantly moving, such as the furniture or the singer.
- Journey (Band): "Separate Ways" has a sequence where the camera pans down the line of band members, who each get right up on the camera in turn to shred away.
- The New Pornographers: "Letter From An Occupant" is a stylistic remake of Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love", though not nearly as creepy.
- Royal Blood: "I Only Lie When I Love You" features an interesting variation, where the scenes loop in a non-linear fashion while still maintaining a continuous movement.
- Sia: In "You've Changed", Played With the children who rotate on platforms at the beginning of the video. Then, in an absolutely literal sense, phrases and words on signs glide through a moving belt below Sia.
- The Smashing Pumpkins: In "Ava Adore", aside from the fact that one of the rooms is pixellated out, exactly halfway through the video the camera — following the band — pulls a 180 to reveal the track that the camera has been, and will be, following; the camera at this point was conveniently tucked into the U-turn on the track.note
- Spice Girls: They took it to the next step with "Wannabe"; the camera actually followed the girls around in three-dimensional space while creating the illusion of one long, continuous shot.
- Sugababes: The "Overload" MV starts with the camera trucking on two of the singers seated on the floor back to back. It looks as if it's them moving rather than the camera. The third girl's face appears just as the belt motion is ending.
- Talking Heads: "And She Was" is animated to simulate this effect, to convey the idea that "the world was moving" and that "she was right there with it".
- TISM: "Thunderbirds are Coming Out" features a long line of Australian bands playing the titular song, with TISM themselves showing up at the end when the song is over. The camera trucks alongside them.
- Van Halen: In "Feels So Good", green-screened repeating images of the individual band members are tracked sideways across the screen.
Live-Action TV
- A Different World: In the second Title Sequence, the camera trucks right, showing the main characters reading non-descript blue books. As the motion continues, we slide to other rooms, in which various secondary characters get brief Establishing Character Moments such as girls prettying themselves up, a marching band annoying the hell of an overworked woman, a Love Interests flirting, a team playing basketball, people dancing, a girl chatting in the phone, military personnel saluting, and graduates celebrating.
Web Original
- Hadriex: His Top 10 online comics starts and ends with select screenshots of what he regards are the best 10 webcomics of the time sliding in quick succession through the screen. It's set to Touhou Project music.
