History of the music video

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when MTV based their format around the medium, and later with the launch of VH1. The term "music video" first came into popular usage in the early 1980s. Prior to that time, these works were described by various terms including "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional (promo) clip" or "film clip". In Chinese entertainment, music videos are simply known as MTVs because the network was responsible for bringing music videos to its popularity.
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action.

With the arrival of the sound films and talkies in 1926, many Musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (1926–30), which were produced by Warner Bros, featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. The series entitled Spooney Melodies was the first true musical video series. The shorts lasted about six minutes long and featured art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing the song. This series of shorts can arguably be considered to be the earliest music videos.
Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called screen songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball". Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theatres.

Another early form of music video were one-song films called "Promotional Clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of soundies were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also of "torch singers," comedians, and dancers. Before the Soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the Soundie made the music the star and virtually all the name jazz performers appeared in Soundie shorts. The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo film made by The Animals for their breakthrough 1964 hit "House Of The Rising Sun". This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; it features the group in a lip-synched performance, depicted through an edited sequence of tracking shots, closeups and longshots, as singer Eric Burdon, guitarist Hilton Valentine and bassist Chas Chandler walked around the set in a series of choreographed moves.

The beatles are very important in the history of music videos, as their music videos took it to a whole new level, using techniques which influenced other films "Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of A Hard Day's Night". a quote from film critic Roger Ebert.

Producing a music video

Producing a music video

I looked at how the media key concepts could be applied to produce a Music video . To so this I used the acronym LIIAR - Language, Institution, Ideology, Audience and Representation.

L- Language
Is the layout and structure of the work such as the text, text colour, photographs and the theme of the picture eg. black and white and sepia, the Masthead, and basically putting the message across in a visual way to the audience.

I- Institution
The band the record label, and everything to do with the band.

I- Ideology
The cover should not include extreme explicit language or graphics as these values are inappropriate and could be deemed offensive by some readers. The idea is to get across that the music video is open to evryone who wants to listen to it.

A- Audience
As I am producing a music video it is aimed at and will be seen by people who listen to music and are fans of the band, the age group could vary from of around 16-30. The video will need to be entertaining, so that it isnt boring to attract the target audience. Fans may feel uninterested in the video, so they may feel the band is uninteresting, so loose interest in the band and wont buy or watch anything to do with them therefore i need to make sure it incudes exciting features that the target audience can gain from and enjoy watching to appeal to this type of audience.
R- Representation
How the text, presents reality, in a mediated version of the real world. So how is the artist trying to get his point across. What he is representing, so for example in "def jam" black hip hop male artists are seen in sterotypical ways, drugs, fancey cars and women dancing. What the words represent and tell the audience.

Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
* a website homepage for the band;
* a cover for its release on DVD
* a magazine advertisement for the DVD

This is the chosen brief which i have decided to do for my A2 media studies. Out of the three options i am going to do the following:
* a cover for its release on DVD
* a magazine advertisement for the DVD