The key factor when it comes to creating a music video in terms of audience is that anybody can be the audience for them. Granted, each music video will be targeted towards a certain demographic, however due to being used as a promotional device for both artist/band and the music, the video is indefinitely going to be viewed by people who are not a part of that demographic due to media outlets such as YouTube and television shows such as MTV.
Each artist will have a particular demographic in mind for their videos and therefore cater them to suit the audience they have in mind. This includes the methods which artists use to cause the audience to view them as appealing. The most common representations to aid with this are the following:
-Attractive e.g. Taylor Swift - Blank Space
-Empathetic e.g. Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud
-Narrative e.g. Eminem ft Rihanna - Love The Way You Lie
-Abstract e.g. Sumo Cyco - Cry Murder
However, this is not the only way that audiences can be targeted. The genre of music being released will also play a big part in the audience likely to view the video. For example, Hip Hop and Pop music is most likely to attract children and teenagers between the ages of 5 and 21, whereas Country and Western music targets much older age groups. The music video will have to reflect the genre of music so as to not mislead the audience.
This information will help me when it comes to making my own music video as it has allowed me to understand the methods which I could choose to use to target a specific audience.
"Thriller" by Michael Jackson was one of the first music videos to place more importance on the narrative of the music video than the song itself. The video was choreographed by Michael Peters who had previously worked with Jackson for the music video "Beat It" and was directed by John Landis in 1983. The video became MTV's first world premiere video to be shown. It merged both music and filmmaking and become one of the most influential pop videos of all time. It is due to the creation of "Thriller" that music videos started to consider more explorative narratives and this also influenced many directors in terms of showing them just how far music videos could be taken.
A music video is a short film, video or series of images that accompanies a piece of music, most commonly a song. They tend to last the duration of the piece of music but can be longer and they need to be visually memorable. This is especially important in modern times as music videos are mainly used to help market new singles and albums to promote sales, however this was not always the case.
In 1929, Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a short film called "Saint Louis Blues" in which she performed a dramatical rendition of her song of the same name. This was shown in theatres until 1932 and was the first film to do so.
In the 1930's, a man named Len Lye started to experiment with putting videoed experiments to pieces of music. The experiments were created using light-boxes and kaleidoscopes.
Following this, in the 1940's Walt Disney created Fantasia - an animated film based around various pieces of classical music. This was a massive leap in the history of music videos, however was still not classified as a music video in itself.
In addition, Walt Disney used an animated series of children's television shows called "Silly Symphonies" which were built around music. This method was quickly adopted by Warner Brothers who created both "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" which were based around music from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films.
In addition, the Panoram jukeboxes were released, with eight different 3-minute long "Soundies". These were popular in taverns and nightspots until the fad began to fade out during World War 2.
Up until this point, musical scores which were accompanied by visuals were simply dubbed "visual music". However, in the 1950's, music videos as we know them today began to develop. In 1956, Tony Bennett was filmed in Hyde Park, London walking along The Serpentine whilst a recording of his song "Stranger in Paradise" was played. The film was distributed across UK and US television shows which lead Bennett to claim that he created the first music video.
The Scopitone jukebox came out around 1960 which was a revelation due to the visuals that accompanied the music being films which had been specifically created for each track.
In 1964, The Beatles released their first major motion picture entitled "A Hard Day's Night" which was directed by Richard Lester. It is arguable that the musical segments in the film set out the basic visual vocabulary we use today and has influenced many contemporary music videos.
Despite being clearly based on "A Hard Day's Night", the American TV series The Monkees was also a huge influence on the development of music videos. Each episode included a number of specially made film segments to accompany the songs used throughout the show which ran from 1966 till 1968.
In early 1967, The Beatles again drastically influenced the growth of the music video with their films for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane". These films were the first music videos to employ techniques such as dramatic lighting, rhythmic editing and unusual camera angles. They are among the first purpose-made concept videos that attempt to illustrate the song in an artful.
The most important innovation in regards to the development of the modern music video was video recording and editing processes. The creation of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras allowed for pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply in comparison to the cost of using film. However, as the genre developed, music video directors preferred to use 35mm film.
Queen's video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) was deemed as 'ground-breaking' and started a whole new era for using music videos as promotional tools. The entirety of the piece was shot and edited on videotape.
By the mid-1980's it became standard for new singles to be accompanied by music videos and many acts, like The Jackson's, sught to gain a commercial edge through creating more enticing videos with million dollar budgets. This is most notable in their video for "Can You Feel It".
In the UK, TV show Top of the Pops (TOTP) was extremely important in terms of promoting singles. It created an environment of competition amongst both artists and record labels as the show placed strict limits on how many outsourced videos they would show. A good music video meant higher sales as viewers hoped to see the video again the week after. This happened to David Bowie's first number one in 1980 thanks to the promo for "Ashes to Ashes". If an act was unable to appear on TOTP in person, the show would use their on site dance troops to perform to the song, such as Pans People.
In 1981, MTV was first launched and was the first 24 hour music video station. The first video aired was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
From the start of 1980, artists began using much more eccentric and sophisticated effects in their music videos and added a storyline/ plot to accompany the music. Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of the short film. A short film is a music video which has a beginning, middle and end. He did this both in "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" but it wasn't until the release of "Thriller" in 1983 that he truly took the music video format to a whole new level. The "Thriller" video was directed by John Landis and cost Jackson $500,000.
Occasionally, videos were made in a non-representational format in which the artist was not shown. This was done by Queen and David Bowie in their "Under Pressure" video.
In 1985, VH1 was released. This was another music focused television program however it played softer music and was meant for an older demographic. A year later, in 1986, Channel 4 begun The Chart Show which played solely music videos in reverse order of popularity. Various different chart shows like this are still around today.
In 1985, Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing" was written as a wry comment on the music-video phenomenon, however its pioneering use of computer animation for it's own video made the song an international hit.
Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer", released in 1986, used special effects and animation techniques developed by Aardman animation and went on to win 9 MTV Video Music Awards.
Due to being played before the watershed, TOTP had to be quite censorous with the videos that it showed. Another approach that acts took was to create promotional videos which would be banned or edited. This would result in controversy and more publicity, helping the singles to sell. An early example of this is Duran Duran's "Girls on Film".
Starting in November 1992, MTV began to list the directors of the music videos with the artist and song credits. This was a clear reflection of the way in which music videos had become more of the director's medium than the artist's. Many music video directors, such as Gondry and Jonze, went on to direct feature films.
Two music videos directed by Romanek in 1995 are noted to be two out of the four most expensive music videos of all time, including Michael Jackson's "Scream" which cost $7 million to produce and was the most expensive music video of all time up until the release of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" video in 2015.
Between 1994 and 2000, MTV launched more channels around the world to show music videos from their own local markets, such as MTV2 and MTV India, however by the mid-2000s MTV had almost completely stopped showing music videos and instead played reality TV shows as these had become more popular amongst viewers. Between 1999 and 2001, a peer-to-peer file sharing platform called Napster was released. This enabled users to share files including music videos.
In 2005, a big change came to the way that people viewed music videos through the launch of YouTube. This made viewing music videos faster, easier and more accessible. Music videos started to become more about gaining views than making money and artists found it easier to share videos than ever before. This made it easy for new artists and bands to be discovered, such as OK Go who achieved fame through releasing "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again" in 2005 and 2006 respectively on YouTube.
In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent them from sharing videos which were property of music labels, to help prevent copyright. YouTube agreed to pay music labels in bulk amounts for allowing music videos to be uploaded which caused some issues due to some record labels not agreeing with the sharing of videos in this format. However, now the internet is the primary growth income market for record company-produced music videos.
In 2009, VEVO - a music website - was launched and became syndicated with YouTube and Google. In 2010, MTV dropped the tagline "Music Television" due to their increased commitments to reality TV. Since this, YouTube has become the biggest distributor of music videos due to ease of access across the globe.
In recent years, musicians have become even more dedicated to creating videos which reflect their music. From boy-band sensation One Direction to Hip Hop star Nicki Minaj, money is being thrown at making new videos to wow audiences and entice fans.
This information will help me when it comes to producing my own music video as it allows me to identify the ways in which music videos have evolved over the years and has helped me to understand that the only way they can continue to evolve is if more creators start pushing boundaries. A single well regarded idea can set off an entire evolutionary change in the industry which is what I should be aiming for when creating my music video; something innovative and creative.
The class is coming together to recreate the "Hit My Baby One More Time" video so as to give us all an opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the creation of music videos and the problems that we could come across when making our own.
This exercise will give us our first opportunity to work with lip-syncing videos to music and will allow us to experiment more with editing techniques to ensure the lip-syncing is correct. This will give us an understanding of the difficulties of lip-syncing and will help to give us ideas about how we can overcome this for when we make our own videos.
It will also allow us to play around with different styles of video in comparison to making the film opening. This will be a benefit to us as it will help us to decide what style we would like our music videos to be - whether we would prefer it to resemble a short film or whether we would prefer to make a performance based video.
In addition, this task will give us an opportunity to become more accustomed with the equipment available to us and will give us some idea as to the quality of video achievable with said equipment.
Plan B's music video for his single Writing's On The Wall is a combination of a performance and narrative video due to the intermittent clips of him performing the song throughout the video which are contained within a story.
The video appears to be an R&B or deep soul video which reflects Plan B's music genre. After switching between soul, hip hop and R&B, Plan B began encompassing the genres together, shown through this heavily R&B dominated piece with some soul aspects thrown into the mix. The typical narrative of R&B videos focus on the themes of failure and success in terms of relationships, economics and aspirations. Failure of relationships is the theme which dominates this Plan B video as well as featuring aspects of
the success of aspirations, shown through the musical success of Strickland Banks, the character that Plan B appears as within the video. It is commonplace for R&B artists to appear within their own videos, however it is uncommon for them to be presented as a character rather than appearing as themselves. The performance shots of Plan B within the video are expected due to them being a recurring visual within Plan B's videos. The theme of adultery has also come to be expected within his videos due to their dominance within his music. It has also come to be expected that Plan B will subvert the norm of R&B videos and will take the place of a character within the story being created for the video. The title of the song itself is a loose intertextual reference to the song "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder.
The video's narrative is a section from the much larger story Plan B created surrounding Strickland Banks. Plan B has been constructed to represent the fictional character of Strickland Banks, a famous British soul-singer who is sent to prison for a crime he did not commit. This story is spread across the entirety of his second album "The Defamation of Strickland Banks". The story follows Strickland Banks as he sleeps with a young woman as part of a one-night-stand who later claims to love him. However, due to his lack of interest she attempts revenge by telling the police that he raped her. Despite the false allegations, Strickland Banks is arrested and imprisoned. Banks struggles with prison life and keeps being assaulted, leading to him killing another inmate. New evidence is brought up in his case towards the end of the CD but it is left unclear as to whether Strickland Banks remains in prison or is released.
The video tackles representation of gender through the adulterous ways of Strickland Banks. It stereotypically presents women as being weak and emotional through the scenes of the girlfriend crying and awaiting Banks' return home whilst Strickland Banks is represented as being dominant, strong and driven by lust. This imagery helps to enforce the stereotypical views of women being dependant on men which is common with R&B yet not as common within soul music. However, these representations play a key role in the story created by the album as a whole, presenting Strickland Banks as a seemingly powerful man who is later outwitted by a female. Despite the allegations being false, Banks is incarcerated, reverting the representation of gender and showing females to be more powerful.The video is not a direct reflection of the lyrics but instead a depiction of the story surrounding it.
The record company's (679 Recordings) role within the video was extremely important as they had to help Plan B to ensure that the video fitted the aesthetic of the rest of the videos for the album and stuck to the concept which he had created for continuity's sake. There was also the risk that Plan B could be held accountable for the behaviours and attitudes constructed for the character and therefore the record company had to ensure that this did not happen as it could have impacted sales in a negative way. However, due to being portrayed as Strickland Banks for the duration of the video, there is very little to be found which directly presents Plan B himself. This promotes Plan B as being dedicated to his art form and more interested in creating something artistically beautiful than creating a brand image of himself. Plan B's music videos are most commonly distributed and accessed through his online YouTube and Facebook pages due to limited music TV
channels that are available in the UK.
The target audience for this video is evidently Plan B's fans due to it being a visual representation for the story being told by the album and therefore the video wouldn't make sense to people who weren't already aware of the album's concept. The main demographic for Plan B's audience is the working class due to his R&B roots however it it possible that since the release of his second album, he also would have gained an audience from the middle class too. This is signified by the crowd shown within the video as well as by Strickland Banks going from his show straight to a club. Fans of Plan B are able to use the video to help build up a picture of the story surrounding Strickland Banks and the video helps to explain the story. Plan b fans are not crucial to the promotion of Plan B due to his online presence and contacts within the industry which are able to promote him as much as necessary.
The video is set in a music venue, a club and a house. The music venue is the setting for Strickland Banks' performance and connotes success and wealth. The club is the setting for the show's after party and connotes wealth, fun and a lack of dignity. The house is the setting for the scenes depicting the women that Strickland Banks has left at home and connotes loneliness and a feeling of entrapment. The show sign at the beginning of the video introduces us to the character of Strickland Banks and the bold, red typography connotes showmanship and success. There are no obvious of iconography within the video but instead uses interesting shot compositions to help tell the story. For example, at 3:54 Strickland Banks is seen to be kissing a young woman behind black bars. This connotes that what is happening shouldn't be as he is trying to hide in the dark. The body language of the slightly older woman throughout the video connotes her impatience with Strickland Banks, her despair and her loneliness whilst Strickland Bank's body language connotes confidence and passion.
The majority of the cuts within the video are quite long making the editing slow paced. This adds to the story and makes the video appear more like a short film which is what Plan B is trying to achieve. The camera moves at several points within the video which helps the viewer to feel part of the action. The most effective use of camera movement is from 3:04 to 3:07 when the camera tilts up from the work surface covered in food to the the woman stood over it. This is because it highlights the efforts that the woman has gone to preparing dinner for Banks and dressing up in smart, beautiful clothing for him to simply go behind her back and cheat on her. Another interesting camera shot used is at 0:59 as the camera is angled up the neck of the guitar. This doesn't add much to the story but is a shot which I find aesthetically pleasing and would consider using in my own music video.
This presentation indicates what I believe makes a good music video:
This will help me when it comes to creating my own music video as it has helped me to establish what constitutes towards a good music video as well as allowing me to find examples of this within current music videos which has helped me to understand how these aspects can be applied.
This will help me when it comes to making my own video as it has allowed me to understand what I will need to include dependent on the type of video I decide to make.
The key factor when it comes to creating a music video in terms of audience is that anybody can be the audience for them. Granted, each music video will be targeted towards a certain demographic, however due to being used as a promotional device for both artist/band and the music, the video is indefinitely going to be viewed by people who are not a part of that demographic due to media outlets such as YouTube and television shows such as MTV.
