Research: The History of Music Videos

What is a music video? 
A music video is a short film that accompanies a song. There are many forms of music video: narrative, concept and performance, however many music videos in the 21st century are narrative. Performance videos are often associated with rock whilst many narrative music videos have an element of performance in them also. The purpose of a music video is to promote both the artist and the song to try and increase songs and get them to the top of the charts. 

The 1920's 
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine

The 1950's 
In his autobiography, Tony Bennett claims to have created "...the first music video" when he was filmed walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London in 1956, with the resulting clip being set to his recording of the song "Stranger in Paradise". The clip was sent to UK and US television stations and aired on shows including Dick Clark's American Bandstand

Elvis Presley 
In 1957, the second music video of the story is set in United States, starring Elvis Presley item Jailhouse Rock, the famous theme prison rock, disseminated images in black and white of the time (although the original was engraved colour).

The Beatles 
In 1964 The Beatles produced a feature film A Hard Days Night. Which featured footage of them playing some of their songs. Some say that this is the start of the music videos. The next year they made various short films of them playing a song in order to promote their albums

Top of the Pops in the 1970's 
The long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. 

MTV and the 1980's
In 1981 MTV was launched as one of the first 24-hours a day music channel. The first music video to be played was “Video Killed the Radio Star.” This channel started the surge of music videos and it became normal for a song to be accompanied with a music video as part of the promotion for the artist. It was also in this time period that directors explored the music video adding story lines and effects.

 The most influential music video of the decade was released in 1983, Michael Jackson's Thriller, costing $500 000 to film and was nearly 14 minutes in length. It is said that Michael Jacksons music videos was “instrumental in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV.”

The Explosion of the 1990's
The 1990’s was the rise of directors. MTV started showing the names of the person who directed the music video shown along with the artist name. This allowed directors such as Mark Romanek and Michael Gondry to start their careers. Mark Romanek directed the most expensive music video of all time Michael and Janet Jackson’s Scream which cost $7 million to produce.

2000's - The Internet
The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched its service 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.

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"

Analysis: One Direction - Story of My Life

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Analysis: It's My Life - Bon Jovi

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Editing: Colour Correction

So we finally managed to start editing!! WOOP WOOP!

However, on the day we filmed it wasn't as sunny as we would have liked and it started to get dark. Which posed a challenge for me when editing as it meant that I had to start colour manipulating to recreate the effect that it was a sunny autumnal day using the colour board and some of the presents I managed to find an effect which managed to enhance the colour which I wanted to enhance without making it look too fake. I then used the percentages given for shadows, mid tones and highlights and put those percentages on each of the clips that I had to consistency within the video.

From these two images you can see the effect that using these setting had: 

The left is before and right after, as you can see I added a sunlight effect to make the colours seem more real and give the impression that the video was filmed on a very sunny day. It also gives a sense of a home video as professionals would not want these effects which links to the first bit of the memories that we see which has the home recording effect on it. 

So far we haven't had much chance to film due to jobs etc, however we plan to film quite a lot more on Thursday evening and then we will start to have a draft of our final music video. 

Analysis: The Cave - Mumford and Sons

Please feel free to click on the photo to make it clearer :)

Analysis: Demons - Imagine Dragons

Research: Controversial Music Videos Over The Years

Over the years there has been a drastic change in what people consider 'controversial' music videos. In this post I will be showing you some of the most controversial music videos over the years. 

1980's: Girls on Film - Duran Duran

Girls on Film was Duran Duran's 3rd single released on July 13th 1981. The single became Duran Duran's Top 10 breakthrough in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at Number 5 in July 1981. The video was made with directing duo Godley & Creme at Shepperton Studios in July 1981. It was filmed just weeks before MTV was launched in the United States and before anyone knew what an impact the music channel would have on the industry. 

The raunchy video created an uproar, and it was consequently banned by the BBC and heavily edited for its original run on MTV; the band unabashedly enjoyed and capitalised on the controversy.

Here are some screen shots from this so called 'controversial' music video 

Personally I feel the music video overshadowed the song's message of fashion model exploitation.

The raunchy aspect is shown through possible 'sexy' situations like the pretty woman massaging the man and the mud wrestling scene.

The song is pop/rock and the video is very fitting to the genre. The band are performing throughout the video which is linked to the rock genre. Also the bands outfits are also of the pop/rock genre as they;re wearing bandanas, and tight clothing. Furthermore pop and rock bands are often associated with beautiful women which is definitely included in this video! There are numerous amounts of women scantily clad throughout the video.

When it comes to editing most shots are 2-3 seconds long, there is an establishing shot of the ban which is longer but this helps set the scene and give the audience an idea of what is going on. The editing isn't exceptionally fast paced but this fits in with the pace of the song making it more aesthetically pleasing.

The mise en scene fits with the raunchiness of the song: massage oil, mud wrestling, alcohol, which all fits in with the mood of the song

The video uses a huge range of camera shots; from close-ups, long shots, low angle shots - which are mostly used on the band and so makes them seem more powerful and having a higher status than the others in the video. 

OKAY, HOLD UP, SO I ACTUALLY WATCHED THE WHOLE UNCENSORED VERSION AND HOLY MOLY NO WONDER IS WAS CONSIDERED CONTROVERSIAL!!!!! I THINK MY RETINAS ARE SCARRED. 

2010's: Blurred Lines - Robin Thicke

"Blurred Lines" is a song recorded by American recording artist Robin Thicke for his 2013 album. The single peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, as well as topping the Billboard R&B Songs chart. It became Thicke's most successful song on the Billboard Hot 100, being his first to reach number one on the chart.

The music video was released on March 20, 2013, and was made in two versions; the first video features models Emily Ratajkowski (bit of a mouthful), Jessi M'Bengue, and Elle Evans being topless, the second features them covered. On March 30, 2013, the topless version of the video was removed from YouTube for violating the site's terms of service regarding nudity, though it was later restored, but flagged as inappropriate.

The genre of this music video is “Pop”, we get this impression through the clothing of the men and the modern day society of how stereotypical women are dressed - mise en scene. The men characters are dressed casually smart and trendy, whereas the women are dressed sexually and look inferior to the men. This music video can be controversial to the target audience as the main conventions are stereotypical to gender.

The ‘Mise en scene’ has been based in one set. The background is consistently light pink throughout the whole music video which could be a stereotype of women as the colour pink is a connotation for women. This can also be seen as feminism as this music video has been targeted at women who struggle to obtain equal rights in society.

 The low angle shot is another convention of where the men look more dominant and powerful than the women. The sexual, bite lipping face the female character is making is sexual and provocative to men as the male gaze is a key aspect in this music video. The close shot of the women lighting the  cigarette is another form of stereotype as women being taken for advantage.

Editing wise Thicke has used his hashtag #THICKE which is plastered across the music video. The hashtag trend is extremely popular in modern day society hence why Robin Thicke has used it. This will gain his media attention through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The hashtag will be a common trend and lead people to follow the trend

So when I compare the two videos, I do not know which one is worse. Personally I find Blurred Lines disgusting and it actually makes me want to be sick. I feel that girls on film is more subtle in the ways it portrays women, but only slightly. The women in their video aren't constantly topless. 

Needless to say I did not enjoy analysing these music videos. *throws up* 

Update on Editing and Filming - 14th November 2014

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Our 3 Key Ideas

If the presentation doesn't load, here is the link to the website I created it on as I had trouble getting it to load on the blog.

http://www.powtoon.com/show/eCqkI7aKUhm/a2-media-music-videos-our-3-key-ideas/#/

Quick Update

Now that a majority of my research is done, I am going to focus on developing out auxillary tasks into a lot more detail, we have already started to design a website, which hopefully we will upload some photos and shots to asap. But we also plan on making a digi pack too. Me and Molly will be working together to make both of these, rather than seperately as we both have different ideas that we both feel will be good towards making our coursework better. I am planning to start on analysing past student example soon and will be doing at least three of these. 

Also, my audience research is well under way, I am just waiting on collecting more responses as so far I only have 7! I have posted a link to the survey I have created on Facebook and Twitter, so hopefully I will be able to finalise my findings in the next few weeks. I understand I am slightly behind on research at the moment, but hopefully within the next week I will be on task and caught up, so I am ready to continue with filming and put all of my focus into the filming and editing side of the task. 

Hopefully it won't be long before we have completed all of our principal filming and we will be able to really bring our finished task together!

Textual Analysis - (Taylor Swift - Blank Space)

Update on Filming

Today, we started the filming process of our coursework. We managed to film lots of footage and take pictures in Nowton Park for a few hours. We didn't get time to go to the Abbey Gardens as we lost the light but we are really happy with what we got in the short time we had. Hopefully, we will continue with our principal filming in the following weeks and start to be able to piece together both a draft and our final film. Aswell as the footage from Nowton Park, we also filmed some footage in the car of Molly and Maddie singing along to songs and dancing. 

Finally, I plan to start on a storyboard very soon and hopefully once we have imported lots of footage and pictures we will be able to upload them soon so that you can see exactly what we filmed on today. Pictures to follow! 

Filming Plan

On Sunday, Molly and I will be starting our filming process. We hope the whether will be good! Fingers crossed! We plan on filming between 3 locations; the Abbey Gardens, Nowton Park and London. We will not be able to get to London for the next week or so. But we will definatley be filming in the other two locations over the weekend and hopefully get a majority of the principal filming complete. 

We still need to sort out exactly what props we will need and we will soon be posting our storyboard up on the blog, we just need to get some photos. We are planning to include a range of different shots and angles, as well as some other techniques we have learnt along the way. Hopefully, we will get some good footage and be able to start playing around with what we get in our next lesson! 

Here are some photos of the locations we are planning to film in - 

London Eye, Nowton Park, Abbey Gardens

Lesson Update - 7th November

Mood Board

Texttual Analysis 2 - (James Blunt - 1973)

Textual Analysis - 1 (The Script - Nothing)

The Script - Nothing 
Goodwin 7 Theory 
Firstly. one of the theories proposed by Goodwin was that generally lyrics will often link to the visuals of the video. In this music video, the band are seen in a club/pub drinking until they are drunk; which links with the lyrics as they sing 'They say a few drinks will help me to forget her' and 'I know that I'm drunk but I'll say the words'. Also, the main theme of the song is about a girl who has broken up with a boy, this is evident in the visuals because in many parts of the video we see an attractive girl who is presumably the ex-girlfriend. There is a contradiction between the music and the visuals, for example the music is quite slow paced and quite sad, however, the visuals are fast paced and diorientating and continuously change. For example, when Danny (lead singer) is underwater with his ex girlfriend, the music slows down, but the sequence under water speeds up, and soon enough he is pulled out of the water. The video demonstrates genre characteristics as 'The Script' is a pop rock band and stereotypically this genre of music uses a combination of narrative and performance based material. Most of this video is narrative but when I looked at other videos 'The Script' have produced I found that they do have many videos that are mainly performance based. Also, demands of the record label wish for the main artist to be shown as much as possible, this applies to this video as the main artist Danny is shown on the video pretty much throughout, there aren't many scenes that he isn't in, and this is shown using a variation of shots, in paticular close ups and extreme close ups. The Script has developed a motif of almost always using the idea of break ups or love within their videos, for example in 'Nothing', the song is about a break up, and the object of the video is a woman. This is the case for most of The Script's videos. This brings me to my next point, there is a frequent reference to the notion of 'looking', for example, the female body; which happens to be the case in this example. The woman who plays the ex girl-friend is wearing red and sparkly clothing when under-water which has connotations of being desirable and attractive. There are frequent camera shots that focus entirely on her body and her 'dancing' in the water. Also, we can see that her cloting is also relitivaley revealing as her legs and back are revealed. This also enables a focus on the female body and making it an object of desire and enahnces the idea of 'male gaze'. Intertextual References of a typical break up are seen, e.g. someone gets their heartbroken, they want them back, they are let down; a reccuring cycle. This is seen in lots of hollywood films and in real life, so many of us know the story that is being told before the band tell it.

Conventions 
Camera Shots - The band uses a variety of camera shots within this video, including mid shots to show the band when they are together. Long shots are often used of the band as the walk through the town that they have been out drinking in, this is used to show the full extent of what they are doing. Many, many close ups are used, paticularly of Danny, who is the one who has presumablly had his heart broken. This is clearly to show the emotion on his face, which shows a lot of pain and despair; this will help for the audience to react to how he feels. Point of View shots are also used to show what Danny or the other band members are looking at, for example, when Danny jumps into the water; it shows him looking at the woman. This shows the subject of the lyrics that he is singing about and therefore allows the audience to make a connection between the two. Over the Shoulder shots are also used when Danny jumps off the bridge into the water, this is to show that his friends are behind him and may be symbolisim to show how his grief for what has happened has made him feel as if he has fallen over the edge.
Mise en Scene - The costume that the main singer wears is quite dark and dull, which can represent the emotion that he is feeling. He is wearing mainly black, which has connotations of being very sad and depressed. The props that are used are limited but include mainly props that relate to the meaning of the song, for example, it is pressumed that many people go out with friends and drink a lot when thety are broken up with; therefore Danny is seen holding beer in clubs and drinking a lot. The lighting in the video is farily dark to represent his emotion but when he dives underwater, the lighting become bright, this is related to the idea that he is hallucinating about his ex, which has made him happy again.
Editing - The video is fairly fast paced thoroughout, this is shown through a montage of images and clips of many different things that relate to the meaning of the song. Danny has the most prevelance out of all of the band members, one reason for this is because he is the lead singer and this is what record labels want from their artists. But, another reason is because he is the subject and character within the video. There is also a focus on intercutting between two different 'stories', the story that Danny is in and singing about, and the story of his ex under the water; this may show the difference in their opinions on the break up.

Representation 
Gender is represented through the use of narrative as the video shows men to be going out and getting drunk, this is stereotypical of men as people think they tend to drink more than women, paticularly when they are upset. Also, Danny is represented as being a very emotional, lonely male; which also breaks stereotype as society views males as being strong, and show little emotion. Females are represented as an object of desire in this video, which is often the case in many music videos; however, due to the fact that the clothing she is wearing is more tasteful and less revealing than some other music videos; I would say that the female in this video is being represented as being respectable and classy rather than more easy and slutty. In terms of location and place, this is represented through the idea that a 'night out' will always lead to getting drunk and as they are in a nightclub or bar, this often has connotations and belief that they are grimey places where people drink too much and do silly things. Again, this is not the case in this video; although Danny does get drunk, he is not over the top and is clearly just letting out his anger and emotion.



NOTHING - THE SCRIPT from Maria Grazia on Vimeo.

UPDATE:

I thought you would like to know a little update on how I'm getting on. I'm trying to keep up to date on blog posts by going through the check list to see what I have and haven't done. Also I have managed to do the casting for my music video.

The two girls are going to be: Me (for my sins) and Maddie Byford. Maddie volunteered to be in it and as me and her have such a close relationship I thought it would be easy to act close in the video.

Me:                                                    Maddie:

From these photos you can see that me and Maddie have been friends for a number of years with the first photo being from our last days at main school (May 2013) the second being during We Will Rock You (Feb 2014) and the most recent being taken for a student party (Oct 2014). 

This proves that we are ideal candidates to star in my music video as I wanted two people who were very close and that the acting wouldn't be very hard for. 

Safe to say we've changed quite a lot!

So, filming plan!!

Our idea is to start filming this weekend on Sunday 9th November. My current idea is to film a couple of scene at Nowton Park. This is an ideal destination as in the autumn it's going to look very pretty with all the leave coming off the trees and it can look like a realistic day out for a couple. Another scene could include sitting on the sofa at home chilling and watching films. I hope to one day go to the beach or somewhere with a lake as another. The Abbey Gardens are also an idea of another location as we can feed the ducks and look cute ;). I also considered going to London for the day and doing some filming there as that would be perfect. But I'm going to have to see how much it is going to cost. 

I looked at the weather for this sunday and this is what is forecast #typicalenglishweather

And I got some photos of some ideal locations #relationshipgoals

So thats the plan so far, I am blogging as much as possible so I should have some more blog posts up in the next few days #onit

Research: Audience Questionnaire

I concocted a survey on the general subject of music and music videos and posted it on both Facebook and Twitter. I had a total of 68 people complete it giving me a large variety of age ranges. Here is the collation of my results and how they effected my view on how I'm going to produce my music video.

Question 1: Are you Male or Female?

For this I tried to get an equal split of both boys and girls so I could find out the interests and preferences of both genders to make my video appeal to both audiences. Luckily there was a rough split of 29 Males and 39 Females so I should have got a good result.




Question 2: How old are you?

I had a massive variety of ages from 12 years old to 57 years old. Not entirely sure how the 57 year old found it?! But as you can see the main ages that answered the survey were teenagers which was very useful as my target audience for my music video is teenagers. Therefore the answers they have given are very relevant and helpful to make my music video appeal to them






Question 3: How often do you listen to music?

From this question I found that not a single person who answered the survey doesn't listen to music daily. Which shows that music has a very big impact on everybody's lives whatever age range you are. There is also a very large proportion of people who listen to music for over 5 hours which is a very large portion of your day.




Question 4: How do you generally listen to music?

A large portion of the people I surveyed listen to music on their phones of through the radio. The radio is generally very up to date pop and rock music whereas on your phone you can choose your music depending on your preference. Youtube is another popular way of accessing music which shows that lots of people do watch the music videos too. A few people mentioned that they use sound cloud to access their music too.


Question 5: What is your favourite genre of music?

Almost half of the people surveyed said their favourite music genre was pop or rock which is very useful as the music video I have chosen to create is a pop song. This question had the most varied of answers as there are so many options for people to choose. Reggae and Punk were two other options that people mentioned which I didn't choose to include in the options as I forgot about them, but obviously many people listen to it.


Question 6: What is your favourite music video and why?
Obviously I couldn't produce a pie chart for this question as there were 68 different responses. But mostly I found people like music videos that stand out and are different from others. For example Aha's - Take on me was a few peoples favourite music video as they said it was the first of its kind.

Another one that was mentioned and popular was Thanks for the Memories - Fall Out Boy because of the narrative is different to any other music video that they had seen. 

Question 7: What is your favourite type of music video?

 

Over 50% of people said they like the narrative type of music video which means that my music video is very fitting to appeal for most people as I have chosen to do a mixture of performance and concept.





Question 8: Do you generally listen to music or watch music videos?

It was interesting to see that very little people only watch music videos, the majority of people like to just listen to music but you can see that many people like to do both. This could show that people need to like the song before they will watch the music video to it.




Overall I found this survey very insightful and I'm very flattered that so many people took the time to give me some very helpful results.

Research: Survey

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Division of Labour

We have decided on a division of labour between myself and Molly; and thought about which jobs suit which person best. Also, how much time can we each commit to each job.

Molly - Molly will be in charge of doing most of the editing as her skills in Final Cut are far better than mine, although I will be doing some of it. We decided this job was also best suited to Molly as she has more time to be able to focus on editing our video than I do. Molly will also be in charge of some mise en scene elements such as costume and location (she decided on our characters wearing everyday causal clothing and our video being shot in 3 different locations, her house, Nowton Park and in a quiet room). Also, Molly will be in charge of assigning actors to our video, we put a message on Facebook asking for two people, but in the end Molly decided to use herself as one actor and our friend Maddie as the other. Molly is also partly responsible for deciding on camera angles and shots to use at what times in our video, and help them fit with the lyrics and music; and have some meaning as to why we use them when we use them. Aswell as all of these jobs, she is also partly involved in the narrative outline, we both came up with this together, but Molly was involved in really developing the story and plot of our music video. 

Jess - My jobs include being the main filmer in the video and I am responsible for making sure that we get what footage we need at the time we film. I also set up the camera to make sure we have the right camera angle; and I also make sure we film the right amount of footage. I am also partly responsible for deciding on camera shots and angles to use and when to use them. This was an important job for me as I am the one mainly always behind the camera as Molly will be always acting. I am also in charge of the other parts of mise en scene such as props and lighting. I decided on the piano that we will have Hattie playing in our video, and also the idea of the couple using the forestry as part of their props when we film in the forest e.g. the leaves being thrown. Lighting is also my job and I am in charge of making sure lighting is right for the right mood/tone, and is also continuous. Finally, I am also responsible for participating in creating a plot and narrative for our characters and Molly and I worked together on getting a really strong plot to go on.

I think we assigned these jobs to the right people well and hopefully the outcome of our project will reflect that!