Mv session1

Session 1 History & Theory

Thursday, 26 November 15

projectmusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk


The Day

• history & theory of the promo

• making a music video

• you pitch

• talk with music video director


What is a Music Video

• lasts the length of the song (sometimes longer)

• features the artist (but not always)

• can tell a story (doesn't have to)

• visually memorable/worth repeated viewing


How did we get here?


1930’s


Music and Image


1940’s


Soundies


1950’s


TV


Film


1960’s


The Beatles join Elvis in constructing artist image through film.



Scopitones


ScopitonesThursday, 26 November 15

ScopitonesThursday, 26 November 15

1970’s


The birth of the pop promo?



1980’s


MTV



The Special ‘Rat Race’

• 1981

• 56th video played on MTV

• first black artists


Pop promo becomes mandatory for getting TV play!


Case study‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

Whitney Houston


TASK


• How many different shots/framings?

• How much screen time is taken?

• Can you spot any music video camera conventions?

TASK


• 17 out of 21 shots are different

• 21 seconds of screen time (a cut a second)



Can we establish any camera conventions?


• lots of close ups & extreme close ups

• irregular framing and fragmented bodies

• looking at the camera



Conventions?


Framework for Analysis Andrew Goodwin (Dancing in the distraction factory )

• Genre characteristics

• Relationship between lyrics & image

• Relationship between sound & image

• Sells artist as a star

• Voyeurism/notion of looking

• Intertextuality (references other media)


Genre characteristics

• Females solo artist

• Performance expected

• Dance music has dancing

• Pop palette/bright colours


Relationship between lyrics & image

• Simple narrative ‘I want to dance with some body’

• multiple potential dance partners

• Night time?

• Don’t you want to dance?

• Consistent themes!


Relationship between sound & image

• Visuals change with the tone of the music

• Colour, light and motion change with pace & key

• Editing on the beat and paced with tempo


Sells artist as a star

• Potentially a lonley heart song turns star into object of desire

• Lots of romantic attention

• Obsessive close ups

• Plays role of ‘actor’ with multipe costume changes


Voyeurism/notion of looking

• Frames within frames

• Looking over wall

• Looking through windows

• Fragmented and objectified bodies


Intertextuality (references other media)

• film Strip

• range of film looks and pop culture references

• multiple dance genre eg. flamenco, street, disco

• numerous costume/set changes


You can do it too!



1990’s


massive budgets


• Only 40 x $1m music video

• Scream, Michael Jackson ,1995 ($10,870,714)

• 27 between 1987-2002

• 5 of the others Ayumi Hamasaki (Japan)


• Kanye West, Janet Jackson, Madonna & Britney are only others who have made $1m + videos since 2002


Others were trying new things!


Pharcyde ‘Drop’



2015


What now?


Adele’s ‘Hello’ gets 485 million youtube views


• 27.7 million views in 24-hour

• fastest video to reach 100 million views (5 days) - beating Miley Cyrus ‘Recking Ball’

• viewing peaked at 1.6 million per hour - beating Star Wars trailer


"[The video] is highly unoriginal. The lyrics are 'Hello, it's me' and then you see someone picking up a phone.

I'm not good at imagining super conceptual videos. I just thought it would be nice to have her walk around the house and make phone calls and end up in a forest, with maybe some flashbacks in it."

Xavier Dolan, (behind the concept of the music video)


The look beats the idea!


Themes are developed fully!


Detail is vital!


It’s still about looking!



10 minute break!


Education

Mv session1