To prepare for creating my music video, I researched the history of the music video.
The History Of The Music Video
Music promotional films or "promo" films, gave rise to the music video which began in the mid 60's and it was Bob Dylan's song Subterranean Homesick Blues as a segment for D.A Pennebacker's film Don't Look Back that was the true origional music video. Britain's own band Queen with their song Bohemian Rhapsody is popularly recognised as the first music video, because of the videos ground breaking effects. The video itself is generally cited as a piece of art as well as a promotional video, which helped established the visual languiage of the modern music video [1]. Bohemian Rhapsody, like all other music videos of the time, was used to promote Queen and their album Night At The Opera. It was this song that is said to have launched Queen to stardom, with the video complimenting their "glam rock" style. The music video used various special effects including an overlapping of images to create a visulisation for a harmonic echo effect, which feastures in the track. They featured the same shot multiple times on screen in a cross section format; this was the first time such effects were used for a promotional video.
Wacthing an artist perform their song from the comfort of your own home became accessible with the creation of Top Of The Pops (TOTP) in 1970. TOTP was a show championed by the BBC to show the weekly single chart sales in the UK, and therefore show the UK number one single. Later TOTP began doing a short run down of the top ten selling albums of the week. This attracted a large audience and when artists could not perfom "live" they submitted their promotional video to be played. These videos were available to be viewed, but they were hard to come by. Most visual information of an artist for UK residents came from TOTP.
It wasn't until the 80's when the channel MusicTelevision (MTV) emerged on cable and satellite, solely dedicated to playing music videos, now as they were purely for promotional purposes the music companies gave MTV the videos for free, as they saw it as free publicity. MTV made money from the adverts they showed in between songs. Soon after MTV's popularity boomed, with free music videos readily available to be viewed, the music companies realised that they were losing out on money. Therfore they begane to charge more for them to be shown on MTV. this extra money could then be used to make better videos and charge more for them to be shown when the artist gained greater publicity from it, for exampe the artist Britney Spears was shot to stardom with her song Hit Me Baby, her video portrayed her in an innocent manner which gave teenager girls a role model to aspire to, also the use of the male gaze appealed to a masculine audience, thus showing the power of the music video. MTV created sister channels such as The Box and VH1, which had similar success. This created a bandwagon effect in which many other music video dedicated channels were created, increasing the competition to have the latest video. This also allowed music video channels to specialize in a particular genre, with varying success depending on the popularity of the genre.
It was because of this boom in the music videos that allowed artists to "break into the music scene". By having their video showecased on these channels it boosted their popularity and status. Much like how Youtube and Myspace work today, in that tby chance an artist can be found, viewed and listend to, the by word of mouth and email, they are spread around the world and their fame is increased. This is why the music channels are beginning to show less and less music, because music and videos are more readily available wia the internet, there is less need for a dedicated music video channel, and this is why MTV mainly shows reality TV programmes, as people are more interested in the "gossip factor" of reality television. Furthermore the usage of illegal methods of viewing music videos has not helped MTV fight the internet Torrent sites and peer to peer software allows users to download and share music videos illegally. This is far easier for the audience to do then to wait all day for one music video or to scour the music channels for the song you want to listen to.
The path of the music video has not changed in all it's time, the main aim has always been to promote the artist or band in question, but now they have become more readily availbale, they have beenturned into something more, they can represent the song or the feelings tha tthe song generates. Music videos have made and broken careers of fresh directors. The music video in essence can kick start careers for many people involved. Or indeed if it is a flop ruin them for good, Music videos are powerful tools when used correctly, and can stay in our minds forever much like the video for Bohemian Rhapsody.
Appendix
Thesen are print screens of my groups call sheet. We decided to make a call sheet so as to help us be more organised with our work and be able to plan for any problems we would most likely encounter. I feel that the call sheet was rather helpful as it meant that everyone knew exactly what was happening and when, it also put us all in contact with one another. Putting together the call sheet was relatively simple, it was essentially a culmination of all the planning we had done before it.
This CD case conforms to current media conventions in that the band name features prominently on the front. The font of the text is instantly recognisable as that particular band. The image used is simple and suits the style of the case. The texture and colour of the case mirrors that of the origin of the bands name the guide "Scouting For Boys by BP"; this guide books texture was of a similar vein to the one used here. The colours are simple and unoffensive; they suit the bands music style and lyrical depth.
This is storyboard number 1 and includes the establishing shot and mainly mid shots, to introduce the characters. Immediately we see there is a problem, with the way the female lead storms off form the car.
The penultimate storyboard is one of pure emotion on the drivers part, on this storyboard we see the driver travel through several emotions ranging from sadness to rage, and then finally his determination to end his problems one way or another.
This is our first location scout, the shot is looking across to the A46, the bridge seen in shot is a bridge we use to shoot aerial footage of the emotional car driving sequence.
This is another shot on the A46, this is the part of the road where we will film the car speed off, whilst we are in a different car. This new angle will give the video a better perspective on the journey the driver is taking, also it will be challenging to shoot and therefore shows our commitment and creativity.
