What is the purpose of a music video?
What is the usual form and style?
Class should first develop a list of ideas in pairs then check which key words they can cross reference.
The Music Video - History, Genre, Style and Ideology
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos date back much further, they came into prominence in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium.
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may be without a set concept, being merely a filmed version of the song's live performance.
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may be without a set concept, being merely a filmed version of the song's live performance.
The Hollywood Musical - Early influences
Musicals of the 1950s led to short-form music videos
Musical films were another important precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad" which was influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.[6] According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959.[7]
Musical films were another important precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl" which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad" which was influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.[6] According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959.[7]
INTERTEXTUAL LINKS TO THE GRADUATE
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THE BEATLES
In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it interspersed comedic and dialogue sequences with musical ones. The musical sequences furnished basic templates on which countless subsequent music videos were modeled. The Beatles' second feature Help! (1965) was a much more lavish affair, filmed in colour in London and on international locations. The title track sequence, filmed in black-and-white, is arguably one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance-style music video, employing rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close-ups, and unusual shots and camera angles, such as the shot near the end of the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the completely out-of-focus figure of John Lennon sings in the background. Most groups will film some band performance in their video, see what you can learn from this clip on making your footage more visually stimulating.
In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips (then known as "filmed inserts") for distribution and broadcast in other countries—primarily the USA—so they could promote their record releases without having to make in-person appearances. By the time The Beatles stopped touring in late 1966, their promotional films, like their recordings, had become highly sophisticated. In May 1966 they filmed two sets of colour promotional clips for their current single "Rain"/"Paperback Writer" all directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg,[11] who went on to direct The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus and The Beatles final film Let It Be. The colour promotional clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", made in early 1967 and directed by Peter Goldman[12] took the promotional film format to a new level. They used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film, including reversed film and slow motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and color filtering added in post-production. At the end of 1967 the group released their third film, the one hour, made-for-television project Magical Mystery Tour; it was written and directed by the group and first broadcast on the BBC on Boxing Day 1967. Although poorly received at the time for lacking a narrative structure, it showed the group to be accomplished music video makers in their own right.
REPRESENTATION
Having watched these videos what do they suggest about the ways in which the Beatles representation changed?
Can you think of any other artists whose visual style has changed over time?
Having watched these videos what do they suggest about the ways in which the Beatles representation changed?
Can you think of any other artists whose visual style has changed over time?
The Counterculture
The monochrome 1966 clip for Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D. A. Pennebaker was featured in Pennebaker's Dylan film documentary Dont Look Back. Eschewing any attempt to simulate performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large cue cards (bearing key words from the song's lyrics).
Dylan's video seems deliberately minimalist. What might this suggest about how he wishes to be perceived as an artist? Remember that stars frequently embody aspirational and attractive lifestyles. What technical codes are being used to subvert this?
THE 8os onwards
THE 80s1981–1991: Music videos go mainstream [edit]In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.
In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form, in which the musical artist was not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare; three early 1980s examples are Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City", directed by Arnold Levine, David Mallet's video for David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure", and Ian Emes' video for Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur".
1992–2004: Rise of the directors [edit]In November 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Stéphane Sednaoui, Mark Romanekand Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallström and David Fincher.
2005–present: The Internet becomes video-friendly [edit]The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos. By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favor of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences.
2005 saw the launch of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook and MySpace's video functionality, use similar technology. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The band OK Go may exemplify this trend, having achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "A Million Ways" in 2005 and "Here It Goes Again" in 2006, both of which first became well-known online. (OK Go repeated the trick with another high-concept video in 2010, for their song "This Too Shall Pass".)
In 2009, 30 Seconds to Mars' music video "Kings and Queens" was uploaded to popular video-sharing website YouTube on the same day of its release, where it has garnered over one hundred million views.[35] It also received over forty million plays on MySpace. "Kings and Queens" was featured as iTunes Store video of the week and was one of the most downloaded videos ever to be featured.[35] The video also received four nominations at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, making 30 Seconds to Mars the most nominated rock artist in VMA history for a single year.[36]
Assessment Task - Essay
What are the different purposes and styles of music videos?
Some will simply recap key points.
Higher graded work will have a range of examples from texts discussed (e.g artists, videos) with accurate and confident use of key terminology and confident and detailed explanation.
E.G Candidate 1.
A Music video is a form of advertising.
Candidate 2
A music video has several purposes. The most obvious one is to accompany the song and help sell the single, and by extension, the artist. However, it has far more long term purposes. It helps to reinforce the representration of the artist. A music video is an extremely important marketing tool. While an artist can only perform to a specific number of people the marketing possibilities of a video are global.Etc
- purpose
- styles
- intertextuality
- filming performance (see Beatles clips)
- different historical video styles (see Dylan)
- changes in form of the video (see 80s)
- changes in distribution