Brief history of the genre
Music Videos go back into the 1800’s when “sheet musicians” still ran the music business. The first music video was made in 1894 and was made by placing many “still images” along with a song recorded from a live performance. This was done so by Edward Marks and Joe Stern, 2 sheet musicians, who wanted to boost the sales on their music. One song in particular that they wanted to boost was called “The Little Lost Child” which became a hit when released. This was deemed the first music video.
In the 1960’s short promotional films began to be created to promote and illustrate the bands in a lime light. Appeal of the bands grew within the public, sales were boosted, and money was constantly changing pockets. More records were produced and more were sold by the minute. The films were shown on television on channels at certain times of the day. This meant that the bands themselves could have their music played with images of themselves rather than have to turn up at a “GIG” to perform the track thus reducing the cost of performances.
In 1981, Music videos went mainstream, and in 1983 Michael Jackson released Thriller, a 14 minute short film to the Thriller music Track and deemed to be the “most successful and influential music video of all time”.
This gained a spot on television for a year after the release and was such a phenomenon that everyone rushed home from work or from school to watch it. Sales of Jackson’s Thriller album Soured and soon records were running dry.
In 1992, Directors such Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Hype Williams all brought a new feel to the industry, their “unique styles and visions” Later meant that they could make feature films and so the rise of the directors was at hand.
Michael and Janet Jackson’s Video “Scream”, directed by Mark Romanek cost 7 million dollars to produce and still to this day remains the most expensive video to produce. This is one of the three most expensive videos of all time, another, also written by romanek, was sung by Madonna called Bedtime Story.
With MTV up and running fully now, music videos were almost essential to make videos around the world heard and seen. In the charts in the U.S a “Brit Invasion” was in hand. The British had been making videos at a higher rate and music was on a high. The videos were then plastered everywhere in America.
Promotional
Bands live to make music, and the music needs to be heard for the bands to live. This means that the more places a piece of music can be heard then the better! Music commonly appears on radio however with the creation of music videos, music can be played on television thus widening the circle and the sales of bands records. The music video also illustrates the track and the album it’s from, it also shows the artist acting out the video and how their life is pictured, usually, the artists lives are not anything like that but not everyone knows this.
Extension of income
The ultimate goal of a director is to keep the artist in the public eye as long he possibly can. This means record sales will fly and more videos can be funded to be made. A director also needs to make sure that the sales can recoup some of the costs that the music originally made to produce.
The albums release means that the music is out and will be listened to, eventually the music will die and so the public will have no interest, the videos will lengthen this time and make it so that the artist will still be listened to months after the album was released.
Extension of outlets
There are many places where music videos can be found now. TV has become notorious for the amount of music channels found on there.
Back in 1981, MTV was the first music channel however now there are hundreds of different channels all broadcasting a different genre of music, different artists and operated by completely different people.
My personal favorite channel is Kerrang who focus their genre on rock and metal music which and play a variety of music videos related to the chosen genres.
Kerrang plays the most obvious videos from bands and artists such as, Fall Out Boy, Green Day and The Offspring. However, they have played Eminem and the Beastie boys which have caused much controversy, arguing and even riots, between fans. Kerrang has also been accused of being racist due to the fact that, the black musician Jimmy Hendrix being the greatest rock musician of all time, doesn’t get played where as white people such as Eminem do get their records played.
Links to TV or Film
Many music videos are made up with footage of Films; this gives them more depth and color to the feel they give.
Some examples are listed below.
New Divide- Linkin Park (Transformers 2)
Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing- Aerosmith (Armageddon)
You Spin Me Round- Alvin and the chipmunks (The Sqeakqual)
Dreams of an Absolution- Lee Brotherton (Sonic the Hedgehog)
Everything I Do I Do It For You- Bryan Adams (Robin Hood Prince of Thieves)
8 Mile- Eminem (8 Mile)
Purpose of research - why do it?
research is an invaluable resource in the completion of work. without it we wouldn't have the ability to know what our works purpose really is. it helps us to explain our topics and critically evaluate points of the topic at hand. it allows to find out facts about the topics that we didn't know before, for example, i didn't know what contemporary meant until starting the research of the music videos. to be honest, research means that we actually knows what we are talking about, otherwise we would be stuffed!
Secondary research - What is it?
secondary research is quite self explanatory. it is research which has been carried out by another person and noted down somewhere for someone to browse for themselves. there are many ways to carry out secondary research a couple of which are.
- internet - up to date but sometimes untrue
- books - completely factual however can be out of date.
primary research- what is it?
primary research is research that has been carried out by the person in question. the statistics cannot be found on the internet and any other forms of secondary research because the research wont have existed bon there. can be time consuming but gives good results.
- questionnaires
- interviews
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