Michael Jackson Thriller Presentation

How have music videos changed over time?

How have music videos changed over time?

 

 

Throughout the decade music videos have changed in a variety of ways from graphics to the quality of the sound and music. During the 1960’s top of the pops was first brought onto the British television, however the music played on this program was music that was in the current charts. If the artist was unable to make the show the producers would then play a small clip the song for the nation to hear. Music videos first became rather popular in the 1980’s, the first popular music video was “ video killed the radio star” by The Buggles. These new music videos were new and exciting at the current time, and the whole concept of music videos then was to have a song accompanied by a skit-type or performance video. For example The Buggles music video was rather simple by just having the band on screen playing their instruments whilst their song was being played in the background. During the 1960’s The Beatles song ‘ Strawberry field” became rather famous due to the fact of that there were more effects were used during this video which only included a small element of performance with more narrative than singing.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs- The Buggles- Video killed the radio star

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzcZttcpYFQ- The Beatles- Strawberry feild forever

 

In the 1970’s a show was created called the “ Mike Nesmith” where an idea was created to have one channel on cable tv for an all day music station which can be easily accessed by the viewing public. When the band Queen was introduced to the music industry sales began in increase. Their music video for “ Bohemian raposdy” was the first video have the band full equipped which was free to view. After MTV was established in 1981 budgets began to go through the roof and white male acts were beginning to get introduced, for example Duran Duran’s video for wild boys cost over 1 million to make and was one of the most successful videos made by MTV. Many musicians and recording artists took music videos as opportunities to give more depth to their song and their image. A lot of artists used music videos for encouraging people around the world to listen and to pay attention to the powerful yet simple voice and image of change.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ- Queen - Boheium Rapsody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M43wsiNBwmo- Duran Duran- Wild boys

 

In todays culture, music videos have changed drastically. Throughout the mid 80’s, the majority of music videos still stuck to the performance variety, and sometimes included the odd special effect. Since the early 2000’s and up until today, the matter that music videos have almost changed completely. Whereas there are some videos that are still clinging onto the “ old school” genre which can been seen today on music networks which can come across as being strange to the older audiences.

Textual Analyse of pop music video

Textual Analyse of pop music video

Technical conventions

·         Shadows

·         Mise en scene

·         Reflects atmosphere

·         Equal division of shots upon band members or focus on key members

·         High lighting/ Lighting in general/Bright lighting

·         High/low angle

·         Special lighting effects

·         Close ups/ extreme close ups

·         Animation and video special effects eg( CGI, GREEN SCREEN)

·         Colour effects- often monochrome/ black and white

·         Fast pace editing

·         Mainly straight cut

·         Panning

·         Editing to reflect pace to music

·         Whole band shots

·         No real sound effects

·         Dubbed sound

·         Zooming in and out

·         Shadows

·         Montage

·         Bright colours against black and white background.

 

3 types of narrative structure

·         Applify the lyrics

·         Contradict the lyrics

·         Focus the lyrics

Intertextuality

·         This refers to the process where one media text may take an idea from an existing text- it may be a carbon copy, a pastiche, a parody or a homage eg, a music video may borrow elements from a well known film .

·         This borrowing of images, narratives etc and reconstructing them can be seen as “ post modern”

 

 

Representation

·         Glamour/ popstar lifestyle

·         Playing out “ pop star” lifestyle within video

·         Mean moody men

·         Seductive poses from female artist

·         Anti- establishment activity

·         Deserted locations and straight forward narratives

·         Guitar solos

·         All playing to the audience

·         Voyeurism

·         Urban locations

·         Dancing

·         Crowd shots

 

Ilustration-    Illustration is the simplest and easiest concept to base a music video around as it is just a literal meaning to the song’s lyrics in visual form. Owl City have used illustrative ideas in their videos before, for example in ‘Fireflies’ when Adam (The artist behind Owl City, Adam Young) is singing and as he says ‘fireflies’ the word fireflies comes up on the screen to a little toy gadget.

 

Amplification-Amplification is closely related to disjuncture, but amplification is just the enhancement of a concept while still retaining a link to it, this technique works brilliantly in marketing and advertising the band in question

 
 

 

Intertexuality- Every text is a mosiac of references to other texts, genres and discourses, Some texts refer to each other directly such as remakes of films or extra diegetic references to the media/ society. There are intertexutal frameworks at work  that are less obvious or direct. Each genre utilies conventions which link it to other members of that genre.

 

 

Disjunction-