The history of Music Videos

Music has been around for century's. It use to be a way of creating entertainment but over the past few years it has become more about advertisement, the meaning of entertaining is starting to become less of a factor.
The first signs of music and video as one was in 1894.

"In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child". Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video."      (Source): Wikipedia

As time has moved on bands have started to use their music videos as a way of advertising and promoting their songs, rather than for the entertainment aspects and purpose's.
An example of this would be 'Lady Gaga - Telephone.'

• Diet Coke - Cans are used as rollers in Lady Gaga's hair
• Virgin Mobile - A phone is snatched from a butch prison yard toughie's waistband
• Wonder Bread & Miracle Whip - Those are the magic ingredients in sandwiches made by Gaga
• Polaroid - A camera is used to photograph Beyonce

This helps show that music videos can be used to help promote other products, such as; Lady Gaga drinking a can of coke in one of her videos. As well as promoting their own music. This is called 'product placement.' Product placement grows in Music Videos link

MTV was formed in 1981 is an American network based in New York. It was brought in to try and help music artists promote their music and was a massive success, as it still is today. 

Britney Reflection

Here is a video after our day of filming our Britney re make. We are reflecting on the days work and looking at what we could have down to improve it.

Initial music video Ideas

Beach House - 'Walk in the Park' 

Teen Dream is the third studio album by American indie pop duo Beach House, released in January 2010. Produced by Chris Coady, Teen Dream is Beach House'sSub Pop debut. The album was well-received by the music press, who hailed it as one of the best albums of 2010.

White Lies - 'Death'

White Lies is an English indie rock band from Ealing, London. Formerly known as Fear of Flying, the band consists primarily of Harry McVeigh (lead vocals, guitar), Charles Cave (bass guitar and backing vocals), and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums). The band perform live as a five-piece, complemented by sidemen Tommy Bowen and Rob Lee.

MGMT - 'Pieces of What'

MGMT, pronounced properly as the letters themselves, M-G-M-T, is a psychedelic rock band founded by Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden. After the release of their first album, the members of their live band, Matthew Asti, James Richardson, and Will Berman joined the core band in the studio. Formed at Wesleyan University and originally with Cantora Records, they signed with Columbia Records and Red Ink in 2006.

The Swing Movement - 'Keep it Red' 

The Swing Movement formed September 2006 on the brow of Ilkley moor out of the ashes of various juvenile projects. Merely a year later the band had toured Belgium, played Leeds Festival and sold out shows at local Leeds/Bradford venues such as The Cockpit and The Love Apple.

Bob Marley - 'No Women, No Cry'

Nesta Robert "Bob" Marley, OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers (1963–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and revered performer of reggae music, and is credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience.

 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'O Children' 

An Australian alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1983. The band is fronted by Nick Cave and has featured international personnel throughout their career.

Briteny Spears remake complete!

Here is our final class video for 'Britney Spears - Hit Me Baby One More Time'. This was a very challenge task but overall helped me in the learning curve for Final Cut and filming on HD cameras.

Vodcast - Media Day 2

Vodcast - Media Day

Britney Spears remake

Today we gathered our footage for the 'Britney Spears' remake. I worked in a group with Faye, Sophie, Harry, Sam and Alex. We had to film the opening 20 seconds of the music video, with plenty of planning we got going.
We used:

• Call sheet
• The video itself
• Story Board

(These were used to try and keep us on track and get it done as quick as possible)

                              We started the day by practicing lip-syncing. We did this through rehearsing sections of the songs by sining them out loud, this help us gain confidence and knowledge of how it should be done.
                              We then filmed our 11 shots of the classroom at the start. After a slow start we got going and manage to get all the footage done. We are all happy with the footage we got and believe it should work well with the rest of it although it was rushed at the start, the final product seemed to be good.
                          
Throughout the rest of the day we did a lot of vodcast's and helping out with other groups.

Everyone found this day very challenging and a lot of hard work went into it. With such a small time period to work with we all had to work fast and efficiently. We manage to shoot all the shots needed and now we are onto editing them Finalcut. We hope the overall product is to a high standard.

Mini-vid Completed!

Mini-vid reflection

We have now completed all the planning, filming and editing of our mini-vid. I have found the process very helpful in my learning both through using the HD cameras and when using 'final cut'.

I have had starter lessons on Final Cut so I already knew the main basis of the program. This experience however helped me refresh on how to use it, also I learnt a new skill of cross fading two shots together. This will be very helpful for when we come to editing our final work.

We only had to shoot 30 seconds of footage which meant we only had time to either film narrative or performance, we chose to film the narrative aspect. This concept consisted of an idea that the young boy was getting bullied by a group of older males. This was an idea selected around the name of the song 'clubbed' meaning beaten.

Overall I believe the experience will help me when we come to making our own video. The use of 'cross cutting' I believe will be very effective in a narrative and performance video.

Idea for our 'Mini-Vid'

When deciding what to do for our mini-vid we had a selection of three songs to choose from. After listening to them all and planning ideas for each song, we decided to do 'Rob Dougan Clubbed to Death' We believed that our idea of 're-creating' the original music video was our best idea, so we went with it.

We planned to film on a Thursday during school time, where we could easily access props and extras (our friends). This seemed the best idea because a lot of us also had after school commitments.

We selected a 30second section of the video to work with. This was between the seconds 00:30 and 1:00.

Problems and Limitations

..... I may face when making a music video!

• Dance Choreography is a trained skill that you cannot achieve without any training. When making a video we have to be aware it will be hard to achieve the same high standard as in professional production.
• Costs, we cannot spend lots of money on cranes, special effects and products, such as; flashing lights and big fancy cars. 
• Props, actors and location...  All three will play a big part when producing our music video. Getting a professional (or good) actor/actress can be difficult. A way in which I plan to avoid this problem is through using the majority of footage of the band I plan to choose performing live, including a small narrative. Location will be decide nearer the time and shouldn't be too much of a problem living in such a scenic area as Ilkley. 
• Lip sinking is a skill that can only be mastered through a lot of hard work and practice. Using an actually band, of which we can gain footage of them performing live will help us overcome this problem. 

Parody's and Spoof's

A lot of people re-create music videos through the use of their own camera's and software. This can be known as a Parody or a Spoof, which then can be placed onto the Internet site Youtube.

A parody (pronounced /ˈpærədi/; also called send-up, spoof or lampoon), in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiricor ironic imitation.

                                                                       (Source): wikipedia


An example of a parody found on the internet would be 'Back Street Boys - I want it that way.'

The original


The Parody 

The codes and conventions of a music video

The majority of music videos consist of Lip sinking and a narrative. However this is not always the case. The narrative usually links to the genre or lyrics of the song, this making the video more relevant to the song. 

• Camera shots - the variety of shots used. 
• Editing and sound - the featuring of jump cutting, the sound usually fits in with the video and the usage of non-diegetic and diegetic sound. 
• Mise-en-scene - can help to display the narrative on screen, the genre of the music being produced can have an impact on how it is displayed on screen. Lip sinking is also used. 

The Coursework task

We have been set the task of producing a music video for our chosen song. We are to look at a range of videos and select what we think are the common codes and conventions.

An music video with I believe is a good example would be 'Arctic Monkeys' with their song 'The View From The Afternoon'. This video provides a brilliant range of shots and the narrative is throughly well thought.


A bad example of a music video would be 'Britney Spears' with her song 'Womanizer'. Because she is not known for having a great voice her videos mainly focus on her and the male gaze. The lack of a narrative and the 'cheesy' dance moves make this video poor.


In order for me to make a good video I will have to look at videos within my genre of choice. Here I will take down the common codes and conventions and apply them to my video.