What is the Purpose of a Music Video?

The main purpose of a music video is to promote, advertise, entertain and create a lasting impression in the viewer's mind. This works hand in hand with promotion and the more entertaining the music video is, the more exposure the video will get from the public.

Music videos are created to promote the song created by the artist and to advertise the music to people, it also helps the artist gain interest from the public. Music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings.

Goodwin's Key Features of Music Videos

Andrew Goodwin identified six features of music videos in his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).

In this music video there is a dance routine in the middle

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative amplifying, contradicting).

The video talks about Romeo and Juliet and the artist is dressed as Juliet and her male lead as Romeo. This video illustrates the lyrics

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

The tune of the song in this video is sad and so are the lyrics, talking about how much someone is missed. The video illustrates the music

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).

Lady Gaga's music videos all contain similar features that she has developed throughout her career

5. There is frequent reference to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

In this video, the members of the band are being looked at by males through a calendar where they are seen in a sexual way.

6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos, etc). 

The beginning of this video is similar to the beginning of the Star Wars films

Characteristics of a Music Video

There are 5 different categories that a music video can fall into. Every music video falls into these, however, most music videos are a combination of these 5.

The categories are:

- showcase
- spectacle
- narrative
- intertextual
- crossover


The most common types of music video are showcase, spectacle and narrative, the last two categories are much less common. 

Showcase

Showcase music videos will showcase the artist or band. Usually, they are completely of the band or artist, although there may be a few dancers in the background. If the music video is by a band, showcase music videos generally identify every member of the band, almost introducing them to the audience with lots of close up or medium shots of each individual band member.

Showcase music videos usually accompany songs released by boy bands, like The Vamps, One Direction and Coldplay

Example: One Direction, 'Little Things'

During the video, the only thing we see are close up shots, mid shots and group shots of the band members.  The music video is filmed in black and white because the director thought it most captured the essence of the ballad. He wanted to let the song do the talking and I think this was very effective.

The use of close up shots throughout the video make the it seem more intimate, which makes the audience feel a lot closer the to the members of the band and therefore more connected to the song.  This will appeal to One Direction's target audience of teenage girls, who want to see more intimate, close up shots of the members of the band, who are all good-looking.

Spectacle

Spectacle music videos are often unusual or strange, and they usually have a different element that isn't conventional in the majority of music videos. They suggest maybe that the artist doesn't belong to the usual genres of music, perhaps presenting an indie or less popular genre of music.

Example: Lady Gaga 'Applause'

Lady Gaga belongs to the pop genre. However her videos are so different to those that are common in this genre of music that this can be considered as a spectacle music video. 

The video includes shots taken in both colour and black-and-white, including artistic and complex scenes such as Gaga's head on a swan, a scene in a bird cage, and the singer seated in a large top hat, as well as more simplistic scenes including Gaga walking in a black outfit wearing a headscarf, and the singer using white cloth, with scenes similar to the cover art of the single, featuring Gaga in bright make-up. Throughout the video bursts of color are shown theatrically. As Gaga sings the line "One second I'm a Koons then...

",which is before "Suddenly the Koons is me.", she is transformed into a black swan/human hybrid. Gaga also wears hand-shaped lingerie and a seashell bra with matching shell decoration. Near the climax, the singer features in a violet, crystal-like scene, and at the end, the name of her album Artpop is spelled using hand gestures. This music video is very unique as it combines art with pop culture. I think this is a good thing because when you watch it you can remember what happens in it as it is almost shocking it is so unusual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applause_(Lady_Gaga_song)#Background_and_synopsis

Narrative 

Narrative music videos follow a basic story, and keep within the context of the song. The narrative could be interspersed with shots of the artist or the artist themselves possibly telling the story of the music video. At the moment I would like to create a music video that falls into this category.

Example: Taylor Swift 'You belong with me'

 Taylor Swift commented "One of my favorite things about this video is that there wasn't a standard performance scene. This video was pretty much all story line and I'm narrating it in the moment, basically narrating while all this is happening around me."

The video commences with the male love interest arguing with his girlfriend through a phone call. As soon as Swift, as the protagonist, notices, they begin to communicate by holding up signs through their bedroom windows. He closes his curtains,

and Swift holds up a sign saying, "I love you". As the song's chorus approaches, Swift starts to sing and dance in front of a mirror, changing to different clothing multiple times. Afterward, Swift is sitting in a bench while reading a book. The love interest arrives and the two converse. Then, Swift, now playing the antagonist, arrives in a red convertible car and he gets in it; she kisses him and gives a hostile look towards the protagonist. Suddenly, she is seen cheerleading at a football game while Swift's other persona is in the bleachers, performing in the school band. After scoring the winning touchdown, he moves towards his girlfriend and finds her flirting with a teammate, resulting in a heated argument which results in their breakup. Meanwhile, Swift, now the protagonist stares in amazement. Back in their bedroom

windows, they again communicate through signs, The male love interest asked Swift, the protagonist, if she was attending prom and she responded, "no, studying". Swift, however, notices he has a dejected expression as he leaves and changes her mind. Shortly after, Swift is seen entering the dance with a white dress, no longer looking like a nerd, while all her peers stare in amazement. When he spots her, he walks towards her and Swift, the antagonist in a red dress, attempts to impede him, but he ignores her. Ending the video, the two reveal folded signs saying "I love you" and kiss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Belong_with_Me#Music_video

Intertextual

Intertextual music videos take one genre of media, in this case music videos and combines it with another, e.g. film or video games.  These types of music videos also include the hommages - those music videos that are specifically made to accompany the main theme song to an upcoming film. A great example of this is the music video for Skyfall by Adele.

 Example: Red Hot Chilli Peppers 'Californication'

This music video takes the form of a PC 3D video game from the third-person point of view of each

of the band members, all on some sort of adventure; this varies with each band member. One runs through Hollywood, dodging celebrities and their bodyguards. Another snowboards in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, then he falls off a cliff and lands on a train. A third swims in the San Francisco Bay, surrounded by sharks and females; he then surfs on a shark's back and suddenly jumps into the front seat of, and drives, a

convertible car. The last band member runs through Sequoia National Park, saving a bear from a hunter, riding a mining cart, and escaping many lumberjacks as they are cutting down all the trees. One of the band members enters a film studio, where he interferes with the productions of a space movie, a pornographic film, and a Leonardo da Vinci biographical documentary. Next another rails one of the Golden Gate Bridge's main suspension wires on his snowboard, while someone else from the band is joyriding across the bridge, and passes through a giant doughnut. He then drives off a cliff, landing on a giant

dragonfly with another band member riding it. In the meantime, Another skysurfs, and a further one rides the da Vinci flying machine prop from the studio. Another person from the band then falls off the dragonfly and lands brutally (losing most of his health in the process) on a giant garden. This scene cuts off into the band passing through an earthquake of the San Andreas Fault, eventually concluding with all four of them meeting at the center of the Earth, where they all touch a 3D cube which transforms their computer-generated avatars back into all four of their own real selves, as the message "Game Over" appears

at the bottom of the screen, segueing into a "Next Game?" prompt, upon which the video ends. Intercut with all this is live-action performance footage of the band, which remains in a picture-in-picture insert till a band member passes through the eight-rayed star; this is enough to make the live-action footage fill the screen each time a band member passes through it. The video itself contains many homages to video games of its time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(song)#Music_video

Crossover

Crossover music videos show various different examples of the characteristics shown above.  For example, they could be a combination of narrative and showcase, which is very frequent.  It's very unlikely to get a crossover of an intertextual music video as they are often very specifically based on a certain type of media, which makes it hard to combine with another characteristic and for it to make sense in about 3 to 4 minutes.  A spectacle and showcase combination in a music video is also quite common, because the artist is often involved as part of the spectacle.

Example: Taylor Swift 'We Are Never Getting Back Together'

The video begins with Swift in colorful pajamas recounting the events of her off and on again relationship with her ex-boyfriend. The video then segues into Swift going into her living room where her band is dressed up in animal costumes and Swift belts out the chorus of the song. The video then goes to a TV where Swift says "Like, ever." and then to the dining room where we see she

returns to recounting the events of her relationship and receives a phone call from her ex who is calling her from a nightclub. Swift hangs up on him and he walks off screen into the nightclub. It then goes to the two in a truck having an argument then to them having a stroll in the park. Swift then runs off and we see her on the phone telling the person on the

other line how she and her ex are not getting back together and her frustration of their entire relationship. The video then segues back to Swift's living room where a party is going on and her ex shows up unannounced trying to woo her back and she slams the door in his face. The video ends with Swift on her window ledge where she was at the beginning of the video, singing the last line of the song. This is a crossover music video because it has aspects of narrative, showcase and spectacle characteristics in it. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Never_Ever_Getting_Back_Together#Music_video

History of Music Videos- Timeline 1920's to present day

1923 – Musical short films were made by Lee De Forest, featuring bands, vocalists and dancers.

1929 – Dziga Vertov made the 40 minute Man With the Movie Camera, an experiment filming real events, paired with a musical score.

1930’s – Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along by “following the bouncing ball”.

Early animated films by Walt Disney were built around music, and the Warner Bros. Cartoons were also fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Bros. Musical films.

Mid-1940’s: Musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film called Lookout Sister.  Some historians claim these films are the ancestors of the music video.

1940’s – One song films called “Promotional Clips” were made for the  visual jukebox, Panoram.  These were short films of musical selections made for playing.  These were popular in taverns and night spots, but fell out of popularity during WWII.

1950’s - Musical films were also an important precursor to the music video(i.e. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,

Westside Story – both major influences on Madonna and Michael Jackson’s videos in the 1980’s)

Late 1950’s – A new format of filming live performances, such as Stravinsky’s orchestra or Tony Bennett singing becomes popular.

1959 – Disk-jockey/singer J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson coins the phrase “music video”, as the rise of television allows popular music to gain exposure through programs such as “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “American Bandstand”.

1950’s - The Scopitone, a visual jukebox was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists to accompany their songs.  It quickly spread to other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and the the Colour-Sonic in the USA were patented.

Many artists began pre-recording music and then filming on location to create a visual accompaniment.  These would feature the artists lip-synching, and most music numbers were taped in a studio set, with the location videos added and edited together later.

1960’s – One of the earliest performance clips in 1960’s pop was the “promo film” made by The Animals for their breakthrough hit House of the Rising Sun (1964).

This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially built set and features the group lip-synching and walking around the set in a series of choreographed moves.

The video depicted the group through an edited sequence of tracking shots, close ups and long shots, and was a new form of the music video medium.

 <- the earliest music video

1964 – The Beatles took the music video further, and began starring in a series of feature films which interspersed comedic dialogue with exciting and innovative musical sequences.  These films helped cement their international fame and exerted a massive influence on the style and visual vocabulary of the genre.

In particular, Help! (1965) is considered one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance style music videos.

It employs rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close ups and usual shots and camera angles.

1965 – The Beatles began making promo clips, known as “filmed inserts” which were distributed and broadcasted in other countries (primarily the USA) so they could promote their records without having to make in-person performances.  Soon after, other British artists began to follow suit and the popularity led to the pop music phenomenon known as the “British Invasion”.

Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, The Kinks, The Who, etc.

1966 – Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” deliberately eschewed the attempt at performance or narrative and simply presents Dylan standing in a city back alley silently shuffling a series of large cue cards with lyrics from the song in time to the music. The cue-card device has since been imitated in numerous other music videos.

The promotional clip trend continued to grow in importance and became a popular medium for television.  Over the next two decades, artists and bands alike would rely on this medium as a way to showcase their music internationally.

These clips utilized many filmic elements, such as cross cutting, reverse film, slow motion, a range of unusual camera angles and movement, dramatic lighting, colour filtering and edited interweaving of location and set scenes. 

They were also influenced by several genres, including impressionism, avant-garde, nouvelle vague, and underground, independent films.  

1970’s – Several TV shows were significant in developing and popularizing the music video genre.

In the UK, the long-running British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970’s.

In 1975 Queen had a major hit due to their promo for Bohemian Rhapsody, and Pink Floyd’s confrontational and apocalyptic The Wall helped transform their image.  In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK number one thanks to his eye catching promo for “Ashes to Ashes”.

In the U.S., Video Concert Hall predated MTV by three years and was the first nationwide video music programming on American Television.  This was followed by Night Flight, which was one of the first American programs to showcase videos as an artform.  Premiering in June 1981, Night Flight predated MTV’s launch by a mere two months

1980's-The 1980’s was an important decade in music. MTV debuted in 1981 and began the era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. Its first music video was Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles

 With this new outlet for material, the music video would grow to play a major role in popular music making by the mid-1980’s.

 

Many important acts of this period owe a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.

Some historians and academics compare music videos to the silent film, in that it allows artists to deliberately construct an image of themselves (i.e. Madonna), and in many ways echoes the image of the stars of the silent era, such as Greta Garbo.

Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment.

The advent of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. 

In this period directors and artists began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video.

Occasionally videos were made in a non-representational form, in which the musical artist was not shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare; two early 1980s examples are Bruce Springsteen’s Atlantic City, directed by Arnold Levine, and David Mallet's video for David Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure".

In 1986 Peter Gabriel’s song Sledgehammer used special effects and animation techniques developed by the British studio Aardman Animation.

This video was renowned for its innovative techniques and went on to win nine MTV Video Music Awards.

1984 – Canada launches MuchMusic

1985 – MTV launches VH1: Video Hits One, featuring softer music and meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV.

1987 – MTV Europe is launched.

1991 – MTV Asia is launched.

1988 – Yo! MTV Raps debuts and helps bring hip hop and rap music to the masses.

1992-2004: Rise of the Directors

In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek and Hype Williams all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed.

Some of these directors, including, Gondry, Jonze and F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as Lasse Hallstrom and David Fincher.

2005-Present

The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Napster, a file sharing service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share video files, including those for music videos.

By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely abandoned showing music videos in favour of reality television shows, which were more popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to pioneer with the show The Real World, which premiered in 1992.

2005 saw the release of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video faster and easier; MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar technology, launched in 2007.

Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online.

In 2007, the RIAA issued cease-and-desist letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its merger with Google, YouTube assured the RIAA that they would find a way to pay royalties through a bulk agreement with the major record labels.

MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The internet has become the primary growth income market for Record Company produced music videos.