A music video is a short film that incorporates music, vocals and a picture to promote a song or artist. Although many people argue that the sole purpose of music videos is to simply promote a new song or album by an artist, many musicians release them purely for artistic purposes. Other purposes of music videos include - to invoke a reaction from the artists audience leaving them remembering the song specifically because of the video, to give the audience a better idea of what the song is about if performance based, to improve or increase the artist's image or reputation.
The history of music videos go all the way back to the 1940's when Jazz musicians started making early versions of music videos called 'Soundies'. Soundies were usually just short performance based films of musicians playing on set, an example of Dorothy Dandridge's 'Soundie' for her song Cow Cow Boogie can be seen below.
The history of music videos go all the way back to the 1940's when Jazz musicians started making early versions of music videos called 'Soundies'. Soundies were usually just short performance based films of musicians playing on set, an example of Dorothy Dandridge's 'Soundie' for her song Cow Cow Boogie can be seen below.
Without a doubt since then, music videos have evolved and developed significantly and first came into prominence in the 1980s due to MTV basing the format of their television channel around them. Not every music video is the same, each one uses a wide range of different film making techniques, some of these include - animation, documentaries, live action filming and non-narrative approaches like artistic/abstract film. Some styles music videos are collaborated together such as animation and live action for example.
Common editing techniques used in the development of music videos include:
-Editing to the song beat.
-Editing to the song beat.
-Straight cuts.
-Jump cuts.
-The use of diagetic sounds on the top of the music.
-Special effects/CGI
Today, nearly every single has a music video and many are nominated for awards each year. The very first music video aired was on MTV by The Buggles and called Video Killed the Radio Star. It was the 1980's when music videos started to become more advanced by including sophisticated effects, plots and story lines with the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller video. The concept of having a short film as a music video gave the meaning a completely different look, and without that the Thriller video, many music videos wouldn't be the same as they are today.
Examples of some well known and important music videos of the past:
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Blur - Coffee and TV
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