Unit 29: Music Video Production - The Purpose of Music Videos

Unit 29: Music Video Production

Task 1
Develop a web-log which comprehensively explains the purpose of Music Videos

• Include a timeline to show the development of the music video with land-mark videos
• Include at least one contemporary case study of an artist and their music videos to illustrate your points
• Present this investigation by using creative presentational techniques

Task 2 

Develop a web-log which analyses the styles, conventions and techniques used in a range of music videos


Comprehensively explain the Nature (how does it exist) and Purpose of music videos?

Music videos exist and are displayed on all types of mediums and platforms. Arguably we dont have to watch anything at all to enjoy the purpose of the product as Music is for our audio pleasure not visual pleasure. From the beginning of music creation there has always been something to watch as we listened. We dont all have the privilege to see our favorite artists performing in front of us and experience live music and similarly artists cant rely on income through live gigs, so they record their music in hope for it to sell in digital formats or on CD's/Vinyl.

In order to sell their music, artists need to promote it. They can do this through touring and interviews and typical forms of advertising such as posters and adverts in magazines but they can also get their music to be heard through a huge range of outlets by the use of a music video. Traditionally music would have been heard live but then with the invention of the radio and vinyl, recorded music could be listened to by music fans almost whenever they wanted. 

With the introduction of television, there was another outlet for music to be heard. However not all artists could play live on television all the time so the music video was invented so that recorded music could still be played on television but the audience would also have something to watch. Shows like Top of the Pops popularised the use of the music video and nowadays there are hundreds of music channels across the world, some even exclusively playing music videos. Then video and DVD came along and artists started selling collections of their music videos alongside their albums.

Some of the shows dedicated to music videos are:

• MTV - MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks (a division of Viacom) and headquartered in New York City. Launched on August 1, 1981, the channel originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys" (VJs). In its early years, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily towardsteenagers, high school students and college students. MTV has toned down its music video programming significantly in recent years, and its programming now consists mainly of original reality, comedy and drama programming and some off-network syndicated programs and films, with limited music video programming in off-peak time periods. It has received criticism towards this change of focus, both by certain segments of its audience and musicians. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues involving censorship and social activism, has also been a subject of debate for several years.

• Magic - Magic is a British music television station owned by The Box Plus Network. It plays mainly easy listening music videos and is based on the Magic Radio network also owned by Bauer. Like some other Box Television music television channels under Bauer's brand, Magic operated a jukebox service where viewers were able to request videos to be played via a premium-rate telephone number. Magic mainly focuses on music from the 1970s (occasionally) 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s.

• The Vault - The Vault is a British music channel owned and operated by Sony Pictures Television. It plays several different types of playlists with creative throwbacks such as:
• 80s Ballads - The best power ballads from the 1980s.
• Cuddie up with Vault - Relaxing chill-out music.
• Greatest Number 2s - The best songs to reach number two from different years.
• Hits From Flix - The best music from top films.

• Kerrang TV - Kerrang! TV is a digital television station owned by The Box Plus Network, which is loosely connected to the magazine, Kerrang!.
  As of 2005, all of its programme content is music videos, the majority of which is open-schedule so as to permit text requests from their playlist. The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal and pop punk/skate punk, although with some unusual exceptions.

• Box Hits - Box Hits (formerly Smash Hits) is a British commercial television channel owned by The Box Plus Network. The channel broadcasts general pop music in shows such as Chartbusters, which is recent music and Pop Domination, which is new and old music. It also shows other programmes such as themed countdowns and charts such as Top 50 Boy Bands. The channel also has hours dedicated to a particular artist or band such as Pussycat Dolls: Ultimate 10. It was originally based on the former Smash Hits magazine, which was owned by EMAP.

• Kiss - Kiss TV is a commercial music television channel from The Box Plus Network, available on the Sky, Virgin Media, Smallworld Cable and TalkTalk Plus TV digital television platforms. The playlist predominantly consists of mainstream hip-hop, electronic dance music and R&B.
  It is based on the format of the Bauer owned London radio station Kiss 100, which started as a pirate radio station in London in 1985. Kiss TV celebrated the 20th anniversary of its launch in 2005.

These Channels are broadcasted on different mediums, some exclusive to the provider. More recently there are now a lot more mediums for the channels to be broadcast on, some of these include:

• SKY - Sky UK Limited (formerly British Sky Broadcasting and BSkyB) is a telecommunications company which serves the United Kingdom. It is the UK's largest pay-TV broadcaster with 11 million customers as of 2015. It was the UK's most popular digital TV service until it was overtaken by Freeview in April 2007.

• Virgin Media - Virgin TV is a digital and analogue cable television service in the UK, owned by Liberty Global. Virgin TV is the largest cable television provider in the country.Virgin TV ranks as the UK's second largest pay TV service. In 2007, it had 3.6m subscribers, compared to BSkyB's 8.2m on Sky, as of Q3 2007.

• NOW TV - Now TV (stylised as NOW TV) is an internet television service owned by Sky plc. It was first announced in February 2012, and launched in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2012 offering only films at first, adding sports in March 2013, and then entertainment channels in October 2013. Now TV is not viewable via Sky's digital satellite television service, or through the Sky Go Internet service. Now TV is designed for people who have no existing pay TV service.

• Netflix - Netflix Inc. (stylized as NETFLIX) is an American multinational entertainment company founded on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California, It specializes in and providesstreaming media and video on demand online and DVD by mail. In 2013, Netflix added film and television production, as well as online distribution. 

• Amazon Prime - Amazon Video is an Internet video on demand service that is developed, owned and operated by Amazon.com. It offers television shows and films for rental or purchase and as part of Amazon's Prime subscription, selected titles can be viewed exclusively to full Prime or Prime Video members, in which video membership allows viewing without full Prime. Like competitors, Amazon has pursued a number of exclusive content deals to differentiate its service, including a multi-year licensing deal with HBO in the United States.

• Freeview - Freeview is the United Kingdom's digital terrestrial television platform. It is operated by DTV Services Ltd, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and transmitter operator Arqiva. It was launched in 2002.The service provides consumer access via an aerial to the six DTT multiplexes covering the United Kingdom. In April 2014 it had some 60 DVB-T TV channels, 26 digital radio channels, 10 HD channels, six text services, 11 streamed channels, and one interactive channel. A number of new HD channels launched in 2014, from a new group of multiplexes awarded to Arqiva. The new HD channels were launched in selected areas on 10 December 2013 with a further roll-out during 2014.

• BT TV - BT TV is a subscription IPTV service offered by BT; a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group, and was originally launched as BT Vision in December 2006. As of the end of 2015, BT TV has 1.4 million customers. BT TV provides on-demand content, 28 extra entertainment channels (18 of which are available in HD), 9 extra children's channels, 11 Movie channels (Sky Movies) and 5 live sports channels (BT Sport & Sky Sports). BT Sport channels are available in SD and HD through IPTV signals. BT Sport, ESPN and AMC from BT are now available in non-fibre areas over IPTV using copper multicast where available.

Most recently the internet has become the most common outlet for music to be heard and music videos are therefore available on a huge range of websites, most notably YouTube. Artists and songwriters and the record labels that represent them can all even make some money out of advertising revenue when people stream these videos online.The risk is that people can also illegally download these videos and songs and therefore the producers lose potential revenue from single sales.

So a music video is a promotional tool that allows the artist and record label to extend the number of outlets that the song can be bought and heard in. It gives the consumer the choice to see something while they hear the song and can also make the people behind the song some money. Music videos can be dirt cheap but also very costly so advertising revenue is not the only way that they can generate income. As mentioned previously, they can also be put onto videos and DVD’s and sold to make more money but increasingly artists can get sponsorship and product placement deals. Music videos can be filled with conspicuous products and this can make the artist and/or record label a fortune. If the artists use the product, for instance drives the car, makes a call on the phone, drinks the drink or wears the watch, then they are likely to be paid even more than if the product is simply featured somewhere in the background. Apparently, Britney Spears made half a million dollars from the product placement in her music video for Hold It Against Me.

Sometimes a music video is tied in to a film release. This can be mutually beneficial for both the artist, record label and the film and its production company. The song features somewhere in the film and parts of the film are featured in the music video. This means every time someone sees the film, they will think of the song (and may even purchase it) and every time someone sees the music video, they will think of the film (and hopefully go and see it or purchase it). This can make more money for everyone involved and is often used for synergy purposes. This is when a company such as Sony that produces both films and music uses the different parts of the business to promote each other. Men in Black for example is a Sony film and the soundtrack featuring Will Smith’s title song is also released by Sony.

All this boils down to promotion and increasing sales. While some music videos are far more arty 

and do not appear to actually promote the artist in traditional ways, most music videos are simpler marketing tools. Major labels put lots of money into producing music videos that will help create an image of the artist that will appeal to the target audience. Independent labels might be more likely to produce more experimental videos for their artists and some artists, often not even signed to a record label, will even self-produce their own music videos just to give themselves a bigger presence on theinternet.

Promotion is vital to increase sales and there can be a number of different goals to it. The aim might be to introduce and establish a new product (in this case the artist and their single is the product), it might be to better position the product in the right marketplace to ensure the target audience will be alerted to it and it might also be to retaliate or make the product stand out from its competition.

The History of Music Video: 

Music videos have had a dramatic impact on the music industry in both former and modern times. However, none of this would have been achievable without some of the key events in music video history altering for its path for the future to come. A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. Purely in modern day music videos are used to promote a song which in turn promotes an album. The main purpose is to sell an image of an artist. The overall purpose is to help to generate money for the record company.

 Music videos supposably originated in 1925 with a comedy act 'Gus Visser and his talking duck' however without intention of promoting his music/act, this acted as a test in the given time which was directed by Theodore Case while perfecting his variable density sound-on-film process. It was at this point this idea was extended in short films such as Bessie Smith's 'St. Louis Blues' which contained a story and however nothing was developed from this until 1964 with both the 'Top of the Pops' and the Beatles film 'A hard days night'. Both of these events boosted the music industry: commercially in both of the events however more skills, techniques and ability was developed using the film industry when creating the music video scenes within the film 'A hard days night' with the help of Richard Lester.

This idea of incorporating film skills, abilities and techniques extended in the following years to support the music video. Famously Black Sabbath took on the newly developed technique known as 'Chroma Key' using a green screen in their song 'Paranoid', although not as developed as today, they used it to create their image adding weird effects and using skills such as superposition and more allowing post productions editors to extend their knowledge and incorporate them into the music industry all this time the director using skills developed by past events such as 'A hard days night'.

The birth of MTV was probably the most ground breaking event in music video history becoming an influential and commercial source of music all over the world with their 24 hour show dedicated to music. This idea led producers/artists to recognise the possibilities and ability to promote their music therefore leading to investments into the media market.

Shortly following this popular artists, even to modern day, such as Michael Jackson and Duran Duran jumped onto this idea heavily investing in their music videos and revolutionising the music industry. These events followed adjacent with the craze for VHS and viewers wanting the ability to view the music and their videos on demand instead of patiently waiting for MTV to broadcast them which sky rocketed sales and commercially boosted the media platform giving the music video industry a larger market with more money to be made.

For a higher effect, meanings and ideas were integrated into future music videos as shown in Run DMC's and Aerosmith's 'Walk this way' holding a negation against specific styles in the music industry showing two genres can be combined leading to the audience having a broader mind when it came to music and styles. 

Spike Jonze, a very popular key aspect in the music video history, took the possibilities and abilities given to them at the time making his videos more appealing with post production techniques and contemporary ideas. A case of this is Pharcyde's video of their hit song 'Drop'. This cleverly and innovatively consisted of  the group performing the whole song backwards, replayed backwards, which when combined with the chopped, spacey beat gives the video surrealistic quality. 

The birth of YouTube also played a key role in the modern music video industry giving the audience and fans on demand access to the artists videos and music and still growing to this day, as this ability expands with more popularity this benefits the artist with not only income but advertisement for the users to consume their music. This led to contemporary videos and existing videos virally spreading across the social media platform. A band that used this to their advantage is 'Ok Go' with their video to 'here it goes again' using simply treadmills and well though choreography their music and video went viral leading to the bands success.

All of this leads us to modern day and our now possible ability and achievements in using music videos. A brilliant example of this would be Coldplay's 'Adventure of a Lifetime' with an outstanding outcome and really displaying our technologies ability to create something with highly realistic features yet all computer generated imagery.

These key events really do display the development of the Music video platform through its history and how innovative ideas and approaches revolutionised it all forever.


Bessie Smith - St. Louis Blues ( June 1929 )

This 16 minute film was one of the first ever music videos in history with the work of W C Handy, the composer of the song, wanted it performed visually as well as musically so he hired Bessie Smith (seen as possibly the most important female jazz/blues singer in history) which they recorded in 1925 and is now considered to be one of the most important recordings in history. Featuring a short/simple storyline of Bessie looking for her man, surrounded by assorted groups of couples sitting at tables with a large band in the background. The man soon enters with another woman younger and more glamorous than Bessie, he insults Bessie and then leaves leaving her at the bar singing in regards to the loss of her lover.

Top of the Pops - ( January 1964 ) 

The first show was broadcasted in 1964 presented by DJ Jimmy Savile live from the Manchester studio, which featured (in order) the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Dave Clark Five with "Glad All Over", the Hollies with "Stay", the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake" and the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", that week's number one - throughout its history, the programme proper always (with very few exceptions) finished with the best-selling single of the week. People watched to find out who was number one that week; in turn this 'forced' people to watch he music videos in the process, making the videos become more popular and well known.

The Beatles - A Hard Days Night ( July 1964 )

A Hard Days Night is a British comedy film starring the Beatles and directed by Richard Lester. It was produced during the peak of Beatlemania. Playing several of their hits at the time the film is supposedly a filler between each song. The techniques developed by Richard Lester are still used today in many different modern media, he helped formalise and establish the codes of how to film a band (a live performance at the time) using: close ups of the lead singer, cutaways of instruments being played, filming the band together and separately, cutting to the beat of the song etc. however it always reverted to the focus point of the singer.

Black Sabbath - Paranoid ( August 1970 ) 

This is the time where the green screen and video process commonly known as Chroma key came in to play within music videos. Although previously used in films, Black Sabbath (one of the first bands to use Chroma key) took their unusual style and fashion and used a green screen to express this in the video 'Paranoid'. This ability allowed editors to explore different techniques such as Superimposing (placing shots over one another) to create a weird effect the band desired.

The Birth of MTV - ( August 1981 )

Introduced with the words "Ladies and Gentleman, rock and roll" MTV changed music video history. Initially opening with "The Buggles- Video Killed the Radio Star". MTV revolutionized the music industry becoming a influential source of pop culture and entertainment all over the world. In it's early days it consisted of basic music videos however the record industry recognized MTV's value and ability to promote leading to money investments in making creative music videos, bringing forward famous music video
directors such as Spike Jonze.

Duran Duran - Rio ( May 1982 )

In 1982 the vivid music video ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran was filmed by director Russell Mulcahy, it featured dreamy iconic images of the band in Antony Price suits, with the focus action of them playing and singing around on a speeding yacht over the Caribbean sea. Small segments within the video show Reema Ruspoli teasing and making fools of the band members as they are trying to live out their assorted daydreams.

Michael Jackson - Thriller ( December 1983 )

Michael Jackson contacted John Landis in 1983 to see if he was interested in creating music video for this song ‘Thriller’ over a year later after releasing the single. He approached John Landis purely due to his work of ‘An American Werewolf in London’. Landis agreed with the exception that it must be a short film and Jackson embraced this idea, the 13-minute film that resulted changed the music video for ever, becoming less a promo clip than a cultural phenomenon. At midnight on 2 December, after weeks of trailers and hype, MTV showed it to the world. This Secured MTV’s reputation as a new cultural force; dissolved racial barriers in the station's treatment of music. This also created a market for VHS rentals and sales as viewers were desperate for the ability to see it when they wanted. In 2009, became the first music video to be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. This video heavily influenced the famous Music Video director Spike Jonze, who furthermore created some of the most iconic Music Videos in history. Nevertheless, the Thriller video was set to be so expensive – $900,000, to pay for not just the filming and effects but 10 days of dance rehearsals – that Landis and Jackson had to find a way to fund it (Jackson had paid the $150,000 cost of the Beat It video himself). It was Landis's producer George Folsey Jr who came up with the idea of the making-of video, which could be sold to networks as bespoke content. MTV paid $250,000 and Showtime $300,000 for the rights to the documentary, Jackson would take care of upfront costs, and the video was able to go ahead, with the label coughing up $100,000. When the documentary was released on VHS, selling for $29.95, it attracted more than 100,000 advance orders in its own right. In result there was 9.5m Total home video and DVD sales of The Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Run DMC - Walk this Way FT. Aerosmith ( January 1986 ) 

The song ‘Walk this Way’ was originally recorded in 1975 by Aerosmith and was blindly sampled over ten years later by Run DMC a fast rising rap group they further discovered where it came from and got in touch with Aerosmith. A genre-smashing video was born. The concept is straightforward: The two bands practice in adjacent studios. Their music is different, but their servitude to the power of the beat is the same. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler busts through that wall, and a new partnership is formed. This not only had an effect on their personal career but added new elements to music as this combined two different genres of music together with an outstanding outcome. Both groups saw immediate benefit from the success of the single. Raising Hell became a million-selling LP, reaching the Top 10 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the R&B album chart, the first rap album to ever hit the spot. And Aerosmith’s faltering career from the early 1980’s got a huge boost.

The Pharcyde - Drop ( January 1995 )

In 1995 at the peak of multi-million rap video craze, The Pharcyde, using an incredibly small budget for the time, created one of the most innovative rap music videos ever mad in their song “drop”. Spike Jonze, at that point an already accomplished music video director having worked with artists such as: Notorious B.I.G, Weezer, The Beastie Boys and Fat Boy Slim etc., directed this based of the idea of the backwards concept from J Dilla’s ingenious production (featuring a looped sample playing backwards) for Drop. Filmed in Los Angeles the video feature the group performing the song backwards, replayed backwards, which when combined with the chopped, spacey beat gives the video surrealistic quality. To further this effect the group also worked with linguistic experts to recite the entire song backwards.

Birth of YouTube - ( April 2005 )

Founded and produced in 2005 this website/social media platform gave users the ability to upload, share and view all types of content. During the summer of 2006 this was the fastest growing website on the web with more than 65,000 videos being uploaded per day delivering over 100 million video views per day. This majorly developed the Music Video industry as viewers and users were able to access the music videos on demand at ease all in on place instead of having to wait for it to be broadcasted on TV. Still growing to this day, as this ability expands with more popularity this benefits the artist with not only income but advertisement for the users to consume their music.

Ok Go – Here it goes Again 2006 

In the year of YouTube ‘Ok Go’ used this opportunity in their favour on July 31, 2006 with their music video to their hit song “Here it goes Again” and as of March 2010, it had been viewed over 50 million times. The video consists of an innovative, simple, single-take choreography using Treadmills. This majorly increased the band popularity and their ability to become more creative in their music videos, as shown in songs such as “Needing/Getting” and “This too shall pass”. This video led the band/group to winning awards: ‘YouTube Award for most creative video’ & ‘2007 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video’. Using this simple idea on an upcoming social media platform made the Artist and their content viral due to their innovative ideas. 

Coldplay - Adventure of a Lifetime ( November 2015 )

Now in modern day this video is really a display of our now achievable outcomes within music videos, with a highly aesthetically pleasing and displaying our technologies ability to create something with highly realistic features yet all computer generated imagery. This idea was all generated at spurges of the moment and chance supposably originally when the lead singer Chris Martin bumped into Andy Serkis on a flight who famously played Caesar in the newly developed 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' and following the 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes'. Again this closely related film techniques in their music video with stunning and surreal CGI. Using this idea of apes the director Mat Whitecross claimed when creating the video and using the modern technology "The incredible thing about performance capture is you can see the characters and the environment already on the screens around you, or through the camera viewfinder. So I wasn’t watching the band, I was watching a group of apes." and claiming “The beautiful and terrifying thing about this technology is that everything can be improvised and changed – endlessly,” says Whitecross. “No decision you ever make is final – you can swap camera angles, change timings, or the position of the band – or even their appearance. Nothing is fixed, other than their performances.

“On the one hand it’s incredibly liberating, but it’s also easy to get lost. So we decided to only use the camera I operated on the day. It narrowed the possibilities in an interesting way – we thought giving the camera a handheld, natural feel would make the impossible things you were seeing seem more possible. I loved this way of working.”

The director worked alongside Imaginarium and VFX house Mathematic to create the elaborate CGI and special effects that appear in the promo and  the band decided they definitely wanted the apes to look real, rather than cartoony. So Silvia at the Imaginarium created these beautiful designs that fused elements of the band’s real faces with those of chimps. We played around making them more and less similar before deciding on the ultimate look.. From idea to completion, the video took six months to make. It was commissioned by Parlophone Records, which orchestrated a deal with Beats for an excerpt to be used in the brand’s latest advert, featuring a section where the band discover a Beats speaker buried among leaves on the ground.

Timeline:

Using a website known as 'tiki-toki' I created a timeline with all the relative information in chronological order representing all of my research.


This can be found here: http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/695124/The-History-of-Music-Video/

Using their software it created a digital timeline which you can scroll through and choose the key events and once extended reveals relative information to you about the event as shown.

Using the timeline you can choose the selected time and relative events you require information on.

An event will show up as displayed below, for more information on the event you can click the 'More' option.

Furthermore this brings up a window with all my research and information on each event and the music video related to the information.

And finally you can 'find out more' about the event by choosing that option at the bottom of the window linking you to the specific music video on youtube