Conventions of the music video

• Dancing
• Singing
• Lip syncing
• Straight cuts
• Hair
• Performance
• Bright colours
• instruments
• fast editing
• costumes
• make-up

100 greatest pop videos 100-80

Today we started researching into the history of the music video. To do this, we started to watch Channel 4's 100 greatest pop videos.

100. Musical youth 'Pass the Dutchie' 1982

This was the first video of a Black act to be shown on MTV

99. Superglass 'Pumping on your stereo' 199

98. Bronski Beat 'Small town Boy' 1984

This video has no lip syncing, and tells a story about a gay man moving and being beaten up as part of a hate crime.

97. Cornershop 'Brimful of Asha' 1997

The band name constantly appears

96. So solida crew '21 seconds' 2001

Introduces the group members, each of which has 21 seconds to do so.

95. The Cardigans 'My favourite game' 1998

94. Bonnie Tyler 'Total eclipse of the heart' 1983

93. Rolling Stones 'We love you' 1967

The video tells the story of what was happening to the band at the time, as one of the members was arrested for drugs.

92. Herbie Hancock 'Rockit' 1983

The video was made to hardly show the artist, as he was black and at the time MTV wouldn't show it, but still be good

91. The specials 'Ghost town' 1981

90. The Pet shop Boys 'Go West' 1992

89. Smashing Pumpkins 'Tonight Tonight' 1996

88. Elton John 'I want Love' 2001

The video starred Robert Downey Jr, a famous Hollywood actor. It is also a very simple video, and just shows him walking round an empty house singing.

87. Talking Heads 'Once in a Lifetime' 1981

It was a very simple video, as it just showed one of the artists, David Byrne, in front of a screen that projected some images while doing abstract dances. The video is seen as art on its own.

86. The Streets 'Fit but you know it' 2004

85. Sid viscous 'My way' 1978

84.The Boomtown rats 'I don't like mondays' 1979

Based on a real life occurrence of a girl who went on a killing spree in her school, claiming her motive was 'I don't like mondays'

83.Shakespeares sister 'Stay' 1992

82. 50 Cent 'In da club' 2003

81. Ultravox 'Vienna' 1981

80 .Radio head 'Just' 1995

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, and is when a creator of a piece of work including literature, music, art etc, is given exclusive rights to their work.

This means, it is up to the creator to decide what can be done with the work.

This is why I must use sites such as unsigned.com Big music artists are unlikely to give permission to use their work. Unsigned artists are more likely to give permission to use their work as but allowing someone to use their music, they get free publicity for their music.

What is the purpose of the music video?

The purpose of the music video is mainly to:

• To popularize the song and artist
• To market the song and artist
• Appeal to core audience
• Interact with audience
• Familiarize with the audience with the artist and song
• Raise awareness of the artist and song
• Illustrate the lyrics

How can a video be judged as successful?

There are several ways in which a music video can be judged as successful, including:

• Positive word of mouth
• Good reviews in magazines, online etc
• Increase in sales via CDs and downlaods
• Charts
• MTV video awards
• Youtube views

Some videos can be seen as successful, but for the wrong reasons. Take the song 'Friday' by Rebecca Black.

The song was publicized mainly on Twitter, with 'Rebecca Black' being in the top ten trending topics worldwide for at least a week. This song has had well over 167,000,000 views on Youtube, and has nearly 7 times more dislikes, which over 3,210,0, than likes. The video has also disabled the adding of comments due to a high number of complaints and comments on how terrible both the song and video is. The artist herself has received death threats.

Due to all the hits, the song has even been released for download on iTunes, along with a number of parodies, as well as apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Model of the media

How can you expand the audience?

One way to expand the audience is to try and get the video well circulated, this can easily be doe on the internet, for example, on youtube. If it is on youtube it is avaliable to people all over the world. With social networks also being linked up to youtube, people are able to share the video with friends and family.

If people see the video and like the song, this could cause the sales to increase as people are more likely to buy the song, either on CD if avaliable, or download it on iTunes.

My favourite music video

My favourite music video is 'Lies' by McFLY.



This is my favorite video as it has a story to it which is separate to the song itself. The mood and the feeling of both the video and music match, however they have little to do with each other than that. This means that even if people dislike the song, the separate story line could keep their interest, which helps as it is around six minutes long.

I think the video did help to promote the song and the artists, which was needed as this was the second music video after the formation of their own record label, 'Super records'. It showed the fans that the change was good in my opinion, and as it was different to any other music video the band had made before, tried to get other people interested.

However, despite this, as the video is several minutes long, and a cut down version would have left parts of the story out and so be unclear of what happened, many people who were not already fans probably wouldn't have watched the whole thing.

The brief

My task is to produce a music promo video of up to five minutes. Along with this, I will produce a digipak CD cover and a magazine advertisement.

Welcome To My Blog

Welcome to my A2 media studies blog.

Here I will research into what makes a music video to help me create my own music video.