History of Music Video

A Brief History of Music Video

Visual material has always been important to music with a close relationship between the two as far back as the 1920s, with Oskar Fischinger experimenting with sound and visual synchronisation in some of his experimental films such as his early Komposition in Blau 1935.

 

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Ever since then there has always been a link between the music and some sort of visual representation from 'soundies' (short films) through the 40s, followed by the rock'n'roll movies of the 50s and the 'Scopitone' in France in the 60s. The Scopitone by far being the most similar ancestor of music video with unnatural colour, fantasy sets and highly suggestive sexual dances, even showing close ups of female crotches. Which directly relates to the extravagance and voyeuristic nature of contemporary music videos today.

The first official 'music video' to be made was arguably Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in 1975 which brought forward this idea of music television. Further prompted by the use of music on many popular TV shows such as The Monkees showing many of the forms and conventions of music video today (comedy, action, surrealism mixed with performance), promoclips being made to advertise TV shows and the rapid growth of cable TV. Lead to MTV finally beginning to broadcast in 1981, however there was insufficient material to actually fill the channel but New Wave British Pop quickly took advantage of this and used the channel to break into the American market. Noticing the potential of the medium American artist followed the British artists lead and began releasing their own promos. Followed by black artists led by the director Hype Williams, who by the late 1990s were releasing high budget videos which in turn generated huge record sales. Which shows how important the invention of music video is as it effectively revived the music industry promoting record sales and establishing image as the key promotion of stars, e.g. Madonna who was propelled to super-stardom by bypassing live performance and making herself known through high profile, provocative music videos.

By the end of the 1980s music video was seen as something that is pre-requisite in an artists success and the promotion of music in general. And has remained as important up to now, with MTV being a major brand which is available in all corners of the globe, its own award ceremony 'video music awards', and now potential film directors using music video as a starting point for making feature films .

Preliminary task

Our Preliminary task was to create a 20 second music video. Our Group chose the song 22 by Taylor swift.
When we presented the video to our class the majority said that the performance, editing and effects were good, and that we also successfully managed to lip-sync the video. However, we could have tried to use other post effects such as colorization or attempted to use the green screen as the point of the preliminary task was to try out techniques that we didn't quite know how to use and I personally already knew how to do the effects which we created. Also, we rushed the filming and did it in two days at our school, whereas it could have been good to use different settings and go to specific places like some other groups did.

Evaluation of last years work

Last years foundation production has helped me to develop many skills which I will be able to draw upon this year and help avoid past mistakes. The research and planning section of the project took up the vast majority of our time as it took us quite a long time to initially settle on an idea which we were all happy with, and then more time to actually storyboard and plan filming. Looking back I feel that we may have ignored a few important elements in the planning stages due to lack of time, such as having a sufficient storyboard as ours was quite rushed. In out up coming project I hope that we are able to efficiently and effectively plan as I feel that this would have helped to make our past project run more smoothly and so would help greatly in this years work.

I feel that my personal organisation skills during the foundation project could have been better as although I was quite good with arranging group situations, my independent study was a little stunted as I found it difficult to keep up to date with deadlines. This year I know now to not allow my work to slide as I will fall behind and it will seriously effect the project.

Personal I felt quite at ease during the filming and editing process as that is what I enjoy doing. However, I did find that I have a tendency to take over, but I have learnt from this to respect that other people need to be able to learn and have a go themselves. Generally to work better in a team, without becoming a control freak. There were a few issues with the editing software being changed half way through the project due to the robbery, however I quickly learned to use the new software and I actually preferred it to the old software. To improve on this stage next year I would suggest getting everything filmed more or less around the same time as missing footage can lead to problems in the editing room. Also to film earlier on in the project to allow for the possibility of reshoots.      

The blog work and evaluation tasks from last year have helped me a lot with showing how dedicated I need to be, helping me be precise and to the point, and helping me to use many different media forms to present my ideas in a creative way. The main thing I have drawn on from my experience with the blog work from last year is how important it is to keep up to date with posting, which is definitely something I really aim on improving during the upcoming project.