1925-1959: The history of music videos commences in 1926, and with the invention of “talkies” many short musical films were created. Warner Bros. produced Vitaphone Shorts which were short sing-along cartoons called Screen Songs. They encouraged the audience to sing along to the song by “following the bouncing ball”. An example of this is Fresh Yeggs which was actually created in 1950 by Paramount and is based on a prison for animals.
1950s: The oldest example of a (non-animated) music video is for the Czechian song "Dáme si do bytu") ("let's go to the apartment"), which was created in 1958. The video follows a couple dressing their house with ornaments and then a band appearing to which they dance.
In the late 1950s the Scopitone (a visual jukebox) was invented in France and so many french artists used this to pioneer short films. It's usage and production spread to other countries; Italy made the cinebox and America made the color-sonic.
1960s: 1964 saw the creation of The Moody Blues' promotional video for "Go Now". The video resembles modern videos in duration with three minutes and ten seconds. The video influenced Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", although it is a decade earlier.
In the same year, the Beatles created the first feature film called A Hard Day's Night. The film is a mock documentary and shot in black-and-white, it's basically their music featuring comedic dialogue sequences. It was similar to the American TV series "The Monkees" (1966-1968) which also consisted of a dialogue sequences to accompany various Monkees songs.
Starting from 1965, the Beatles released promotional videos which at the time were known as "film inserts". They were used as promotion for their work in other countries, mainly the united states, so that the group would not have to travel abroad to perform live. The clips were simple mimed-in-studio videos and were meant to be included in television shows like Top of the Pops and Hullabaloo. 1970s: Music videos were being pioneered much more regularly from 1965 with artists like the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan creating some of the most legendary. During 1972 David Bowie starred in a series of short films including "John, I'm Only Dancing", "The Jean Genie", "Space Oddity" and "Life on Mars?". In 1974, Australia created both the music television shows, Countdown and Sounds. These shows played significant roles in shaping the music video genre in Australia and neighbouring countries. Graham Webb, the creator of Sounds needed more clips for the show, because although music videos were popular, they weren't mainstream. He approached a newsroom staffer and asked him to shoot footage to accompany popular songs which had no videos.
Mean whilst the original director of Countdown, Paul Drane figured that video clips were becoming a popular new commodity within the music industry. Thus Drane made several music videos including AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)". 1980s: In 1980, the music video to David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" became the most expensive video ever made with a production cost of $582,000. The video was shot in solarised colour and was the most iconic of the time. It's complex structure has been significant in the formation of music videos.
In the same year, the new Zealand Group Split Enz released a complete set of promo clips for each song from their album True Colours after doing well. These video clips were released to fans via video cassette.
In 1981, America launched Music Television, better known today as MTV, airing "videos killed the radio star". MTV aired music clips all day everyday, allowing the music video to develop to a centre space within the music industry. Many important artists of this period, such as Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran, and Madonna, gained a massive amount of their fame from this platform.
The 80s saw two key innovations for the evolution of modern music videos. These were firstly the creation of less expensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and secondly the production of visual effects. After video-tape recorders were invented, these cameras weavled into DIY ethos of the new wave era, which allowed a diverse array of pop artists to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, distinguishable to the pricey predecessor, film.
In this decade, creators began to play around with the form and style of this commodity. For example they would explore camera effects, use a combination of 35mm film and video, and add a storyline or plot to the video. Sometimes non-representational videos were even made, meaning that the artist wasn't shown. This was a rarity though, because at the core of them music videos are intended to promote the artist. An example of this kind of video was David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure".
The 80s also saw music videos exploring political and socio-political themes. For example, David Bowie's "China Girl" explored race issues by presenting an interracial relationship. In the Rolling Stone, Bowie explained his reason motivating the video, saying "Let's try to use the video format as a platform for some kind of social observation, and not just waste it on trotting out and trying to enhance the public image of the singer involved".
In 1983, Michael Jackson released his music video for "Thriller". The video has been deemed as the most successful, influential, and iconic of all time by a wide array of sources. The video for "Thriller" as well as Jackson's videos for "Billie Jean" and "Beat It", were a influence towards getting music videos by African-American artists played on MTV. 1990: During the 90s MTV release several channels worldwide to present local music. MTV Latin America was launched in 1993, MTV India in 1996, MTV Mandarin in 1997. MTV2 also debuted in 1996 to show music videos for an alternative audience. 2000-2010: By 2005, MTV had disregarded music videos in favour for reality TV, which were more popular. 2005 brought the creation of YouTube which meant that viewing music videos online was a lot easier and quicker.
Some artists began to correlate a link between success and video making, and an example of this is the band OK Go which achieved fame after videos for two of their songs: "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again".
In the late 00s MTV began to release streams of artists' music videos and AOL also initiated AOL Music which showcased an extensive supply of advertising support streaming videos. Apple's iTunes Store provided a bunch of free music videos viewable with the iTunes application. iTunes evolved to have purchasable music videos which could be played back on the iPod. In the 00s, the internet evolved to being the primary arena to attain music videos.
The primary music video streaming site is vevo on youtube, are vevo was launched in December 2009 by several major music publishers. SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
My partner and I have decided that when we shoot our music video, we will use a hand-held camera. This decision was influenced by the American TV series as well as independently made music videos such as this one - "Love $ick" by Mura Masa.
This video seems unpolished, but it's refreshing because the intention of the video is not to portray the life of a celebrity. It shows the live of normal youths from London which is relatable for most of the audience. Relating to the video is a raw and fresh experience in my opinion, and we want to cater this experience to our audience. Also the use and gratification of our video will be tension release. Audio-wise, our song covers doubt and mistrust which our audience will most likely be able to relate to, so an ordinary unpolished camera technique works to me.
6KeyFeatures
Our music video will feature the first three features of Andrew Goodwin's Six Key Features theory.
The first key feature is: music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. The genre for "All Night" is hip hop and as hip-hop derives from African-American music and is flaunted mainly by black Americans, we've chosen to style our model with a hairstyle originating from Africa. Whilst in the past black celebrities have 'white washed' and altered their features to appear more European, a lot of popular artists today are styling their hair naturally or traditionally.
And so we have briefed our actress to either do an African hairstyle or to wear her hair naturally (which is afro textured).
Hip hop is also adored by youths in western countries and is quite mainstream so we've instructed our actress to dress ordinarily (in minimalism) as we want her to look like any other teenager.
The second key feature is: there is a relationship between the visuals and lyrics. Our original interest in this key feature was motivated by this web-series: Going There. We loved how the creator made visuals that related to what he was saying and how some of them were literal and some metaphorical.
The key concept of our video is doodalism. We were influenced by Skrillex' video for "Where Are You Now?" where he also used the second key feature with illustrations that show his lyrics.
Some of our overlays will relate to the lyrics, such as when Chance raps "You just wanna talk about politics, Chicago shit and rocket ships", perhaps we'll doodle Donald Trump and a constellation from space...
The third key feature is: there is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. The tone of our song is upbeat and jumpy, so our actress will be dancing around in the footage. Even though the meaning of our song isn't so positive, the atmosphere is due to the rhythm, and so the atmosphere of the video will be happy.
Movement
When we film our video, I'm open to spontaneous decisions and will go with the flow, however a cool video which inspires me in terms of movement is Radio Head's "Man of War". I like the simplicity of the actor simply walking.
Section 1 of my questionnaire asked participants questions concerning their social status to help give my audience an identity. I distributed my questionnaire via random sampling to a sample size of 30 people, at my school. I distributed based on sexuality, and so gave it to 15 boys and 15 girls. And I also distributed based on age. Each age quartile has more or less 10 participants. Ages are present below:
I am fortunate enough to go a very diverse school so evidently in the chart to the right hand side, my audience is extremely ethnically varied. I asked my audience of their ethnicity because I believe this contributes a lot to telling us about their up-bringing and identity.
Section 2 - "You and Music Videos"
Section 2 essentially explores the audience's connection to music videos. I asked the consumer how many hours they typically devour a day to watching music videos. I was keen to know this because I know, personally for me I spend a great deal of time watching music videos and I derive a lot of satisfaction from videos. However I also know some people who simply listen to the audio and don't watch. This question is useful because it indicates how much the audience care for the video. The results were as I expected. The majority of my audience spend less than an hour watching music videos, but still a considerable amount of time. After that, a lot of people watch music videos for one to two hours, and then a portion of people simply don't watch music videos. A minor amount of six people watch the video for three to five hours.
I asked our audience what their passions include as our video will appeal to them more if it features themes of things they enjoy. We found the most popular options that we listed were video gaming, art, and dance.
Questions nine and eleven were added for a similar purpose. Results are as shown:
Section 3 - My Music Video
Question thirteen asked the audience what the title "All Night" reminded them of. Answers did not vary greatly and common replies were 'parties', 'being out', 'fun'. This question was necessary as these themes (partying, being out, fun) are themes which our music video will explore and we want our thinking process to be uncomplicated.
We finished our survey by asking the audience if they enjoy dance based videos as "All Night" is a dance song and that will be an element of our video.
