History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a song or piece of music, the storyline of the video generally fits with the lyrics of the particular song the video is for. Many music videos feature the band or artist performing the track, especially with new artists, this is to help us get to know the artist. Modern music videos are used mainly as an advertisement for the song to help boost sales and revenue, a lot of music videos also contain adverts for unrelated products for example in the video for the song ‘last summer’ by Nicko Project there is a woman eating a kit kat, which is completely unrelated to the video, this is also to help boost profit.
Music videos have been around for many years, they first came about in France during the late 1950s with the invention of the Scopitone which was a visual juke box. Although invented in France and at first predominantly used by French artists the Scopitone’s use quickly spread to other countries.



The Scopitone paved the way for other countries such as Italy who created the Cinebox and the USA who created the Color-Sonic.
In the 1960s one of the first pop performance clips was made by the animals for their song ‘house of the rising sun’ the lip-synced performance was filmed in high quality colour on a specially built set in a studio the video was choreographed.
Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s promotional clips grew in importance, ‘song films’ or ‘filmed inserts’ as they were known at the time were usually used by artists to show if they could not perform a live show or meet and greet with their fans.
Pink floyd were among the first to start making promotional films for their songs, because of this they were pioneers in the music industry.
In 1974 two programmes premiered called ‘countdown’ and ‘sounds’, both of which were very important in developing and the music video format as a way of promotion in Australia and several other countries.
In the 1970’s top of the pops started showing music videos but were restricted to the number of videos they were allowed to show, this made more bands make music videos as a good music video would increase sales as the audience would want to see the video the following week.
In 1981 the channel MTV launched with a very fitting song for the even 'video killed the radio star' by The Buggles. This launch dramatically increased the use of the music video format and by the mid 1980s it was a central part of popular music marketing.



The developement of easy to use cheap recording equipment has made music videos more easy to make. This enabled pop acts to make promotional music videos easily and inexpensive.
MTV later launched another music video channel which was aimed at an older audience than MTV, this music channel was called VH1.
In 1992 MTV began listing Directors of the music videos.
later in the 1990s they launched channels in various other countries such as MTV India and MTV mandarin and also they launched MTV2 which was to show more alternative and older music.

in 1997 music videos appeared on the Internet where people had recorded them as they were shown on television and digitised them, exchanging them on peer to peer file sharing sites such as napster.
In 2005 the website 'youtube' launched, this made viewing music videos online faster and easier.
Some artists such as 'Ok Go' found fame first through youtube with their clever video of themselves on four treadmills. Another band, Weezer exploited the fame youtube can bring by featuring many youtube celebrities in their video for the song 'pork and beans'

Because of the popularity of music videos on the internet MTV have started streaming music videos online itself.

Brief

To create a a promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promotional video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;
• a cover for its release as part of a digipack (CD/DVD package);
• a magazine advertisement for the digipack (CD/DVD package).

Alongside my promotional music video i have chosen to create a cover for its release as part of a digipack and a magazine advertisement for the digipack.

LIIAR

Language; the language of the music video are the conventions used in creating the music video. The conventions are particular elements in music videos that are widely recognised as being part that type of media, for example there is often a few shots of the band playing and singing the song in the video in time with the music. There are three rough categories of music video, these are performance, narrative and abstract. Performance is generally a video of the band or artist playing and singing the song and putting on a performance for the audience e.g. Vlad the Impaler by Kasabian. Abstract is where the video is not based on the lyrics of the song and usually has no connection to the song whatsoever, e.g. Strawberry Fields by The Beetles. Narritative is where the video is based on the lyrics of the song, e.g. Heart Shaped Glasses by Marilyn Manson. Narrative is the most common type of music video, it uses various techniques such as lighting, mise en scene and cinematography to create the mood of the song the video is for.

Institution; this is the company that produces, markets and distributes the music video and the artists music, e.g. Sony BMG and Universal.

Ideology; this is a dominant set of ideas and beliefs behind the creation of the media text and is also the reason the text is presented the way it is and also expresses the message the artist want to put across.

Audience; this is the public, the people that consume the media text that has been created, in this case, the music video. Music videos are usually aimed mainly at the target audience, however they usually also make it accessible to a much wider range of people, this increases their audience and therefore their profits. Another way to increase their audience is with a collaberation such as Tinie Tempah and Eric Turner. Also as Eric Turner is a relatively unknown act pairing him with a new but well established act such as Tinie Tempah will increase his popularity and therefore his audience.

Representation; this is the song is represented and also the way the band or artist is represented within the video for example in the video for the song 'Booty Call' by The Midnight Beast, the artists are represented as fun loving, 'happy go lucky' teenage boys, which is very true to how they are in real life. Also in the video for 'die another day' by Madonna, she is portrayed as a very strong independent woman, which again is very true to real life. The representation also needs to fit the genre of the song and often contain references to the lyrics of the song. The video should also be very memorable so that it sticks in the audiences mind and makes them want to purchase the text.