The History Of Music Videos

Research Into Existing Music Videos

Looking At Existing Music Videos

This week I had a look at existing music videos I had a look at Fall Out Boy’s new album I found it unique when I noticed that each song had a music video. All the music videos for each song on the album were interlinked together. After all the music videos were finished they were all put together to make a 45 minute music video/movie. Each song was a significant part of the storyline. Having such an inventive type of video in turn would have made the fans feel part of something special. No other artists that I know have created something so unique with their albums.

Theory

Research Into Genre

Pop music originated in its modern form in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. As a genre, pop music is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles including urban, dance, rock, Latin and country. However there are core elements which define pop. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure), as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and catchy hooks.

 

Characteristics

Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:

• an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology
• an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities
• an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance
• a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments
• much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms

Definitions

David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk musics".

Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts it is not the sum of all chart music, which has always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately.

Influences and development

The term "pop song" is first recorded as being used in 1926, in the sense of a piece of music "having popular appeal".

Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music.

Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the special meaning of non-classical music, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, ABBA, etc".

In the early 1960s [the term] 'pop music' competed terminologically with Beat music [in England], while in the USA its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of 'rock and roll'".

From about 1967 the term was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms.

Influences and development

Pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz, country, and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing from electronic music, rhythmic elements from hip-hop music, and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap.

It has also made use of technological innovation. In the 1940s improved microphone design allowed a more intimate singing style.

Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised performances, "pop stars had to have a visual presence". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers could listen to music outside of the home.

Pop music has been dominated by the American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics.

Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a thriving pop music industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop, has for several years has produced a greater quantity of music of everywhere except the USA.

Going To London

This week I made my way to London to film more for my music video. I was able to make space on the camera after filming in Africa. Going to the London eye on a Saturday insured me that there would entertainers on the streets that I could film to make my music video more interesting and cultural.

 

I went to film the sea of poppies which I’m intending on using in my video, making it more sentimental and cultural. I filmed by a skate park which was significant as it represents the youth of my target audience.

Research Into Similar Product Research

A Vida Doce - Short Film from Haydon Media on Vimeo.

Regardless of this being a short film it’s similar to how I plan my video to look like. My video is going to look at the beauty of people. My video focuses on family, people around the world and how every each one of them are perfect in their own way. My video is somewhat sentimental and embraces people in their natural habitat. Like the movie most things in my video aren’t staged, it looks at how people act in their everyday life and the happiness that surrounds them.

 

The video uses a lot of close-ups to show peoples expressions and allow them to stand out more than their surroundings, in my video I plan on using quite a few close-ups and long shots as I plan on basing my video on the beauty of people around the world. Having filmed in another country just like Johnny Fonseca did in his film I have incorporated both long shots and mid shots so people can see the surroundings and culture of Zambia.

 

Filming such things like fountains helped Johnny set the scene in his film which is similar to what I did. I was able to film such things like traditional African wooden sculptures that would set the scene and remind people that they’re watching something from a country on the other side of the world. This in turn allows people to pay more attention to the video as they would be interested in seeing how the other half live. 

Andrew Goodwin

Post-modernism

This week I looked at a postmodern music video and analysed it. Looking at the Lady Gaga Paparazzi music video various times I started to think about whether or not my music video would look postmodern. With the definition on my blog that ‘anything can be art, anything can deserve to reach an audience, and culture as there is no longer anything new to produce or distribute’. I thought about how Lady Gaga used representations to represent reality. In addition she used existing scenes from movies and made them look more modern in her video, creating several references to popular movies. In the rest of my definition I wrote that the distinction between media and reality has collapsed, and we now live in a ‘reality’ defined by images and representations’. Lady Gaga uses a stage name and is hardly referred to as Stefani, in conclusion her private life stays private and she’s able to pull of such controversial things such as wearing a dress made out of meat. Having an alter ego allows singers to be creative with their music videos and in turn they get less criticised than if it were themselves who wore a meat dress out in public for fashion but not to outrage people as you’ve got a well-known alter ego who essentially does outrageous activities.

What i did in the summer

This summer I had the delight to go to Africa and film part of my music video. Despite the fact that my initial plan was to go film family, people and things that were merely stereotypically African I wasn’t able to go film any wild animals. I was able to film people cooking traditional African food and film the surroundings of Lusaka Zambia. As I had filmed prior to me going to Zambia I had to delete some of the footage that I had filmed when I was in London, regardless I was able to film while I was on the 11 hour flight plane to South Africa and on the 2 hour flight plane to Zambia. I was able to capture people in their element; people with their families and having fun. I plan on going into London and Filming more before the weather takes the worst turn. In order to do this I will upload all the footage I have onto my account at school and have enough space for new footage. When I have all my footage I will think to make a story board in which I will incorporate the footage I took over the summer and blend it in with the song so my music video makes sense. If I have the opportunity to go to another country I would plan to film there too so I can incorporate different countries and cultures in one music video which in turn should make the video more interesting.