Music Video History - Task 1 & 2

Music videos have been around since the 1960's, although these were only performance videos it still gave the music a feel to it as you could see the band members and what they were wearing and how they were acting. The first 'real' music video which was directed and edited was bohemian rhapsody by queen.


Music videos are there to advertise the song and the artist. Their soul purpose is promotion but it also represents the song. They do this through different types of music videos.

The different types of music videos are narrative (storyline), performance, or abstract.

Examples of this

Storyline:

This shows the story of a person having two different types of days, a happy day and a sad day, but then in the end the sad day is still happy. This reflects the song as it's a happy upbeat song.

Performance:



This shows the band performing but not on a stage it looks more like a warehouse which in some ways shows them breaking from conventions. They also have a twist because loads of green liquid spills over them which wouldn't usually happen in a performance video.
Abstract:



This video just shows lots of colourful random stuff. It's quite childlike (having a teddy bear and ballet dancer) but it also somewhat relates to the lyrics as there's a money tree and car.

Different genres of music have different music videos as it represents their music. So pop tends to be colourful and happy and the music is, they also have lots of people dancing as people listen to pop to dance and sing.


In this video they show a party (so people dancing and having fun) but also everyone is wearing different outfits which are really colourful and bright. This is almost like a parallel universe because it's like normal life but the colours are more vivid and brighter. It's like the audience is escaping real life by watching this video.


This video is slightly more realistic but some things are more colourful than in real life like the grass.

Other genres like indie and rock tend to have more performance based music as it's more about the lyrics then being able to dance to it. Although they can have storyline based music videos as it could relate to the lyrics. It tends to not be colourful and it usually sticks to dark colours.


Having a good music video is important because it reflects on the song. If the music video is bad then when it comes up on a music channel people won't stay tuned.

A conventional music video whether it's narrative or clips, will most likely show a person signing the song, no matter what the genre is.






These two songs are completely different in genre and style but still they show a person singing the song.

In a music video they tend to have lots of short clips rather than one long shot. This is because it usually keeps in time with the music and it keeps the video upbeat and energetic. If a music video is all one shot and slow people will get bored.



Although this is a slow song so the music video is slow it's still boring.

In my opinion a music video has to be fast, have a storyline and be different from other music videos to be interesting. This music video is like no other, it has a weird storyline and is fast paced. And for those reasons it's my favourite music video. It has loads of action in it but not so much it diverts from the song.