Essay on music videos

Our task is to make a music video using a client we’ve found by ourselves. The reason we are finding our own clients is so we know how to do so outside of college giving us skills we can use in the future. We have learned conventions within music video such as pop videos have fashionable clothing and beautiful people within them. We also talked about the three types of music videos, such as narrative, performance and concept music videos. Narrative is about a story, performance is very much of the performance what’s given and concept of the video such as cool effects or direction the video is given at the beginning. We are learning how to beat edit. That is where we edit the video so that every time the beat drops there is a cut to a different shot. This is a well-used technique because it makes the cuts seems a lot more natural and let the cuts go unseen. An introduction into music videos is that it’s a video to show the meaning behind a piece of music or a video. An example of this is “happier” by marhsmello which is a love song but through the video you understand that it’s not a conventional love story, it’s a love story between a lonely girl and her best friend who is her pet. So, a film maker can get their view on the song through their video, so if you listen to the song happier you could go a number of different ways such as a love story between a struggling relationships, new love or a story about two best friends and that type of love story. So, a song can be perceived in a number of different ways and a music video can show you how the film maker sees the story by it can also be to see their skills as well such as over-cranking and under-cranking, visual effects and special effects. Examples of this are within music videos as ‘OK- GO” zero gravity music video where they do a number of activities. This includes paint and popping balloons in zero gravity, or doing fast editing with jump cuts which is a way of making the audience feel emotion. During making a music video getting emotion across is very important. Even though having a child’s song over a horror scene can be effective. It’s not always the approach most people will want during their video; they want it to have a connection with the video and the music. So, the purpose of a love song is to make people feel happy and warm. The music video will also try to get the audience to feel this as well so that it suits the song. They were originally called prom videos because they are mostly used to promote the artist and that is a purpose of a music video is to promote an artist. The beetles used this tactic often by using the music videos to change their image because they didn’t want the image they had and a music video is used to change an artist’s image or for them to get an image that they want to have.

 

Music videos were originally made in 1925 with a video called Gus Visser and his signing ducks, there isn’t anything special within this video and is very much what it sounds like with a man and his ducks signing. This was the earliest music video I could find and is very basic probably because of the lack of techniques and special effects we have within them now. Even though this video was made almost 100 years ago it still comes under the three types of music videos. The video shown is either a concept even though the idea of a music video is now a concept as it is within the early 20th century. Or it’s a performance even though it is a very basic performance with him signing next to the ducks but with the time period it was made in its very impressive. Even though the use of mise en scene and costume is just a plane stage and a suit. It matches what people would expect to see back then and is very similar to what they would see on a stage so even 100 years ago the use of mise en scene and costume is still very important to make people feel what they want them to feel. In this case it’s making them feel like they are watching it live. Music videos were originally called promo videos because they were only originally used to promote the artist but now it’s a way of testing or showing off your skills and to tell a story. During the 80’s they called promo videos for rock bands rock videos. But both of these terms have slowly became used less and the term music video has taken their place because it’s a video to go along with music. In 1940 Disney released a film called Fantasia which is an animated film to a number of classic music. During the 1920’s and further it was common for promo videos to contain animation. Since animation could only be short because of the lack of time and money and songs were shorter than five minutes because they were afraid that people would lose interested after too long so these two types of media use to go well together. In the 1950’s and 60’s there was developments within music video film making. In 1956 Tony Benett was filmed walking along the Serpentine in London as a recording of “stranger in Paradise”. This was played on TV within UK and the US as well. This was later known as the first music video. The first video to be known as a rock video is a video in 1959 called “The Big Booper”. Around the 1960’s the scopitone, a visuals joke book was invented and made its way around France. Many French artists used this to make videos about their songs. Leading to popularise music videos. The modern era of music videos started when editing and the film process became more advance such as new camera techniques and quick editing and unique edits to videos to make it more interesting to watch. The UK top pops were very important for the film making industry because it can show music videos which were lesser known and get the creator and the artist out there more to increase their popularity. It would also encourage other groups or singers to get film makers to make them a music video to so they could get on the top pops. Queens 2Bohemain Rhapsody” also started a whole new era. Because they introduced longer music so a long music and Devo was one of the first Americans to create a music videos”. Devo’s first self-produced music videos include “The Truth about Devolution” which was directed by Chuck Statler. These videos were also important because they were the early long music videos. In 1981 there was MTV launched. A channel where music videos was its prime source of revenue. The first video being aired on it was “Video killed the radio star” by the Buggles. David Bowe got his first UK number one due to a music video and thanks to director David Mallets and the video “Ashes to Ashes”. In the 1980’s they started to use effects within their videos such as special effects, editing tricks and story lines/ plots. In 1984 they realised Thriller that was a short film what took the music video to a new level, making people realise that a music video is a way of getting a story across and made people take music videos seriously. The top pops in the UK was censored in its approach so film maker made it so they would have the top pops censored or edit their work so then people would go out of their way to find the original music video. Music videos had a lot of growth during the 1980’s and made music videos a lot more popular. The information technology era, music videos were now as popular as or more popular than the songs themselves they were now able to be sold as DVD’s and tapes so people could spend more money on them and start to collect them. So because of this music videos became more of a business and were taken more seriously because they could make them more money. They started using more effects within them to make them flashier in the hope people will start to watch them and buy them.

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One of the purposes of a music video is to get emotion across. They are meant to make the viewer feel emotion to or because of the video. Such as a love story meant to make the audience feel positive emotions, such as feeling happy and warm inside. They can do this by using camera angles, colour grading or story line. If you look at the music video Happier you can see a bright yellow colour grading for the happier bits and darker colour grading for the sadder bits. This is colour psychology, the audience see the colours and they associate it to an emotion. Such as yellow being bright and happy but colours like dark green and dark blue and they feel lower and depressed. So showing certain scenes with certain colours the viewer will feel the emotions the director what’s them to feel. A story line is one of the main ways to make an audience feel emotion, such as within happier the girl starts off being sad and but then she gets herself a dog and becomes best friends with it. But then after years the dog finally dies and the girl then makes friends after she bonds with people because of her pet. This story line is very relatable to anyone who has a dog because a because people do love their pets because they are a lot of peoples best friend and with the girl being lonely at the beginning is something the audience can feel towards and can put themselves in the main characters shoes. So it makes the audience feel sad because of the dogs’ death and the girl being lonely but then makes the audience feel happier because the girl wasn’t really alone because she had her dog and then made new fiends. Camera angles are also used to make the audience feel. It can you feel small with a low angle or tall and in powered with a high angle. Another purpose of a music video is to promote an artists. For instant the beetles often tried to use their music video to change their image because they isn’t want the reputation they had with them being in suits and bowl haircuts. People see music videos and assume the artist is like the character they play in the video such as having a lot of money or being really smug but if an artists doesn’t want that image anymore they will make another music video to change their image. Such as Taylor swift and wrecking ball. She didn’t want to be known as a Disney star so she made a music video to get rid of that image. The purpose of a music video is to promote the artists, so if a music video has good effects or looks pleasing to the audience more people will watch it and find the artist because people mostly see it within YouTube’s trending or on TV. Another purpose of music video are also to make money, music videos became popular within the 80’s because people realised they can a lot more money from music video so the better looking a music video is the more likely people are to spend money on it.

There are three types of music videos, Concept, performance and narrative. These come under every type of music video. Even within the earliest music video I was able to find they come under. Gus Visser and his signing Ducks was the earliest music video I could find and it comes under these. Because it’s mean to look like a stage performance because that’s what people were used to seeing back then so it comes under performance. A performance is where they have dancers or someone signing on camera. Concept is where they have a performance in zero gravity  or use effects. A concept is where you have an idea such as a whole music video being on Pogo sticks and then go out and film it. Either by using visual effects or special effects. A narrative is where they tell a story. Such as Happier and Empire new cloths where they tell a story to make the viewer more interested watching it. Their are conventions within music videos . Such as lip syncing or over and under cranking. There are conventions within the genres as well so love stories will have people who have strong feelings towards each other while horror would have monsters and the dark within it. A convention is something what you would expect to see in a film to know what genre it comes under, such as horror having blood and sci fi having science. They use techniques within music videos to make the audience want to watch them and buy the DVD's. Over-cranking and under-cranking are two of the most used techniques to make a scene faster or slower which builds tension or action. You can do this by filming at a higher or lower frame rate and then speeding it up or slowing it down while editing. They also do silent cuts to make a film look like it's been taken in one shot which makes it look more pleasing. Special effects are another well used technique such as either CGI (computer generated image) or make up such as in empire new cloths where he transformers into a devil. This is made to look like one cut and has special effects to make the transformation believable. Beat edits are another well used technique. Its where you cut to a different shot whenever the beat drops. This is done to make the scenes less noticeable and make it look a lot smoother 

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We are making our own music video by going out to find a client and then get in contact with them and arranging to make a music video with them. Our client is a rapper from Neverlands known as as Mayvision. We tried to get in contact with other singers/ musicians but got no reply. He agreed for us to make him a music video but gave us free range of what we do. He didn't say a genre or any song. So we chose the song Brain Pain and are going to do a narrative music video because we weren't able to have the singer within it so it'll be darker story line. We haven't decided any scenes or story lines yet. We are choicing have it at run down locations such as abounded buildings and having a darker story line, with themes of monsters. Since there are lyrics about snakes we could get the art department to make a special effect of a bully looking like a reptile like monster and have him feeling sad and down in these dark locations until a happier ending. We will be using beat edits to make the cuts look more natural. That way we can us techniques such as mise en scene, colour grading and special effects being the make up we can use to turn the bully into a snake. The since is quite fast and if we're doing a beat edit the action within the film will have to be fast which we can do while editing it, we can have film it near day fall to make the lighting darker so we don't have to alter the lighting much during editing. 

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