What Is a Music Video?

A music video is a short film that accompanies a piece of music for promotional or artistic purposes. Usually around 3-4 minutes in length, the modern music video spans a wide range of styles and themes. Many videos feature a narrative alligned to the lyrics of the song, many are centred around a concept and remain unrelated to the lyrics, and many utilise filmed performances, either as the subject of the video or in combination with the aforementioned two - usually as a result of the type of artist and/or genre.


Performance


A performance style music video features the artist in a recorded or simulated live performance. While arguably providing a more simplistic production process, the style allows the band to showcase their talents while appealing to the audiences who can perhaps not make it to or afford live concerts. This style may appeal more to the great performers, rather than the great recording artists - a band or artist who's strengths lie in live performances may choose this style over one that does not highlight their abilities. The style also allows the artist to appear less pretentious in that they appear to have spent less money meaning a less commercialised image is created. This style can also be used to promote tours or concerts by showing the audience a glimpse of the live shows.


Narrative


A narrative style music video features a storyline, often correlated to the lyrics of the song. Sometimes featuring the band, a narrative style allows the artist to construct or further the image they wish to create -whether it be through a fun or dramatic video. A narrative video appeals to the audience in that it allows them to see the artist's otherwise unseen personality and different sides to their character. An impressive music video can garner the artist extra popularity or exposure as new and existing audiences seek out the video.


Concept


A conceptual music video focuses around a singular idea or theme and tends to be fairly strange, unusual or occasionally surreal. In much the same way as a narrative style, a concept video has the power to attract the attentions of audiences both new and old, generating increased popularity or exposure for the band. While concept style videos tend to be rare due to the accessibility demands of the mainstream audience, a successful video can be of great benefit to the band's image and revenue.

What is the Purpose of a Music Video?

When creating a video, no matter what production processes go into making it or the style of the final product, the end aim is the same: Promotion.

While music television has perhaps waned in popularity, music videos are important in showcasing the artist on the new wave of music sharing technology - video sharing websites such as YouTube. A video is required to upload onto the website, but it is a free and simple form of production which has proven outstandingly effective. A successful (or unsuccessful) video can quickly be shared throughout the website, building world wide fame. As such the noughties has seen an influx of artists who have gained huge popularity rising from videos posted on video sharing website, perhaps the most famous of which being Justin Bieber who shot to worldwide fame after starting out on YouTube. This can in turn lead to record labels, single releases (especially on iTunes initially) and eventually tours - fulfilling the role the artist/band created the video for - to gain promotion in the hope of making money.

YouTube Sensation Justin Bieber

A performance style music video can help promote live shows and tours. By giving the audiences a glimpse of the live experience, a good video could entice the audience to attend such performances, garnering greater revenue for the band/artist and record labels, as the case may be. This again shows the music videos purpose as a promotional tool designed to increase income.

A successful music video can help a band/artist to build a reputation or image they desire, through differently styled videos. Largely influenced by genre, a band hoping to construct a dark image will in turn create videos with a darker feel to them. Aside from live performances, a music video is the only viable method the band/artist has to portray the way in which they see themselves and, as such, is essential in creating the band/artist a reputation and image.

Director Profile: Michel Gondry

Background:
Gondry was born on May 8, 1963 in Versailles, France.


Career:
Gondry began his career making music videos for the French rock band 'Oui Oui'. The style of his music videos caught the attention of Björk, kick starting a long term collaboration with the artist. He has also collaborated with artists such as Daft Punk, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, The Vines, Steriogram, Radiohead, and Beck.


Style:
He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène.

Director Profile: Jonas Åkerlund

Background:

Born on November 10, 1965, the Swedish Åkerlund began his career in music as a member of heavy metal band Bathory before moving into directing.

Career:

After finding fame working with Swedish pop act Roxette, Åkerlund went on to work with artists from many different genres such as Lady Gaga, Metallica, Christina Aguilera, U2, Blink-182, Pink, Rammstein, and Britney Spears. He is also a long time collaborator with Madonna, having worked on a series of her music videos as well as her documentary, "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret." His video for Madonna's song "Ray of Light" won a Grammy for Best Music Video, Short Form, and a record seven awards at 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, including the Video of the Year.

Style:

Åkerlund is known for his stylish music videos which are often mock forms of movie trailers and short films. His more recent works for Rammstein, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears have courted controversy for their 'pornographic' content.

Director Profile: Mark Romanek

Background:
Born in Chicago on September 18, 1959, Romanek studied a four-year film production and theory program at a progressive public high school. He graduated from Ithaca College, New York with a degree in cinema and photography. He spent the next few years writing screenplays before releasing his first feature film, Static.


Career:
After signing with Satellite Films, Romanek decided to focus on music videos. Working with some of the top artists from different genres, he quickly established himself as one of the most innovative video artists working today. Creating groundbreaking videos for such varied artists as Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Fiona Apple, Beck, Lenny Kravitz, David Bowie, R.E.M., Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson and many others, Romanek has received many awards for his work - including more than a dozen MTV awards, two Grammys, and three Billboard Music Awards.


Style:
Romanek is known for his unique and often disturbing style. His videos tend to be artistically and expertly filmed, filled with intimate and often provocative images, and on occasion, controversial, as the perverse visions in his clip for Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” proved.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Opposed to the effects theory, Uses and Gratifications theory suggest that instead of being used by the media, audiences use the media to gratify their own needs. It suggests that the media fulfils an audiences need for information, and that the more we get our information from the media the more we become dependant on it. Other uses that it is said audiences can get out of the media are a sense of personal identity, social interaction, and entertainment. From media representations and stereotypes, and through written media such as magazines, audiences can get a feel for who they and their peer groups are. Common conversation topics are about tv shows and news broadcasts, therefore media can be used to give audiences topics to talk about with others, improving their social wellbeing. Audiences can use the entertainment provided by the media as a form of escapism, to allow them to forget about their lives and to indulge themselves in a world more attractive to them. Entertainment allows audiences to escape to a 'utopia', although rarely a literal utopia, but 'rather the utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies' as said by Dyer, a theorist on Uses and Gratifications. This quote means that rather than take us to a perfect world, entertainment from the media can show us utopian contrasts to what we may be feeling. For example, if an audience is exhausted, media entertainment can show energy.

This theory is less criticised than effects theory, as it does allow for the audience to have a say in what it receives - audiences only take in media relevant to the information they wish to gain - however it is still criticised. The theory is criticised by many people as it 'let's the media off the hook'. These people believe that the audience has no say over what the media produces, thereby refuting uses and gratifications theory, as the audience is never truly in control of what it sees.

Effects Theory

Effects theory is an audience theory that suggests audiences 'absorb' media messages and are influenced by what they have seen to change their behaviour. It is this theory that lies behind the justification for censorship, as it is believed that exposure to violence in films and on tv could lead to causing people to be violent after watching them. This theory is backed up by Bandura's 'Bobo Doll' experiment. In the experiment, Bandura, a psychologist, observed the behaviour of children after they had watched violent tv shows and compared this behaviour to a control group that hadn't watched violent tv. He found that after watching the violent shows, children were more prone to acting violently towards a 'bobo doll' toy, whereas the other children would play calmly with other toys. However this experiment can be refuted, as the bobo doll that the children were given to play with is a toy designed for being violent towards in the first place. Therefore children acting violently towards it doesn't suggest that violent media caused them to be violent at all.

Effects theory is often discredited, as it relies on the belief that all audiences receive media messages in the exact same way, with no room for interpretation, and that when audiences have seen the media, they are effected by it. This does not hold true, as if it were so everyone who saw an advert would go out and buy the product advertised, and two different people wouldn't be able to have different opinions on the same film. Clearly this is not true, however despite this effects theory still has a great effect on censorship and therefore on all our lives.

Digipak Research

As the band we are doing is an indie/acoustic band, we have been looking at album covers for bands of those genres. Common themes appear to be drawn and collage effects, such as in the pictures below, so we will likely follow down this route.

Another common feature of indie album covers is that the band don't appear on the cover itself. Instead they tend to heavily feature highly artistic imagery, although rarely of a realistic nature. Often they go for a surreal feel, or a distinctly 'modern art' look. An example of a surreal album cover is the new release from the band 'The Strokes'. The cover for the album 'Angles' features a picture heavily reminiscent of the work of artist and mathematician M.C. Escher. The paradoxical image is clearly surreal, and is a feature of many indie album covers, so is a route that I would look into going down when designing my own digipak.

Website Creation Research

Using Google we have found a website that allows you to design your own website easily, and have started creating a website for Johnny Cash, however the website, www.bandzoogle.com, is only free for 90 days. Because of this we have contacted the administrators of the website to ask if, because it's purely for coursework use, we can use their website for free until the coursework is marked. However the owner of www.bandzoogle.com got back to us and has told us that we can't use his website for free, however he did point us in the direction of a similar site that is completely free, called www.wix.com. We have started using this website to create a homepage for Johnny Cash.

In terms of the design of the website, we are going to reference Johnny Cash's reputation as The Man In Black, by having the website predominantly black.

Album Cover Design Research: Photoshop Techniques

We have been looking into techniques that can be applied via Adobe Photoshop to create effects of album covers, and one that we've been looking into and practicing with is and effects that creates a glowing line that wraps around figures in the photograph. This effect involves creating a path, removing sections of it behind the figures to give it a 3-dimensional effect, and then adding glows and blurs to it.

As a test I used a picture of the band Skindred as it was a high quality photo, so even at a large size it wasn't distorted. Below are the picture before and after the effects were put on.

The process I followed to create the effect was as follows:

1. I created a new layer and drew a path with the pen tool.
2. I set the brush tool to 5px and 100% hardness, then returned to the pen tool and right clicked on the path. On the pop up menu I clicked stroke path.
3. I use the eraser to remove any parts of the path that I wanted to appear behind the people, creating a 3-D effect.
4. Using layer styles I created an inner and outer glow on the path. I duplicated this layer, removed the glows and added a gaussian blur.
5. Then I created a new layer and set the brush tool to 3px and 0% hardness. In the brush palette I activated shape dynamics and scattering. Then I used the pen tool to right click on the path and used stroke path again. This created the particle effect on the path.
6. After that I used the eraser again to remove any particles that I wanted to appear behind the people.
7. Then I repeated those steps until I had as many glowing lines as I wanted.

This created an impressive, professional effect, however when I come to designing the actual album digipak I will have to work on creating neater paths, and if I use the effect will probably do so in a more subtle way.

Digipak Research

As an established artist for a long time, Johnny Cash's albums have a very similar cover design. Often they feature a picture of him in black and white with the word 'CASH' in large capital letters. It is the word 'CASH' which draws the attention of anyone seeing the album, and is something of a trademark of his albums. Therefore in our digipak cover we will try to incorporate this into our design.

Johnny Cash is also known as 'The Man In Black'. As we obviously cannot use Johnny Cash himself in any photos we take for the digipak, we will use his reputation as the Man In Black instead. This will allow us to shoot a photo in black and white like in his existing album designs, and give a representation of Johnny Cash without having to have a picture of him. For the pictures to go on the inside covers of the digipak we will likely use pictures of religious imagery used in the video, such as bibles and crucifixes.

Analysis of a Music Video: Skindred - Pressure

Another video I'm going to analyse for forms and conventions is Pressure by Skindred, for which the video was directed by Marci Friesland.



Skindred are a 'reggae-metal' band, and so there are certain representations of themselves that they want to present through their videos, such as being laid back, fun-loving and bohemian. The video creates this feel through using an effect that makes the band look like cut out pictures in a collage. The video is a hybrid of the performance and concept forms of music videos, in that the majority of the video is the artists performing, but it is presented in a surreal way.

The video follows genre characteristics of rock/metal videos by being a performance video and showing much of the performance on a large stage playing to a crowd. The video does relate to the music, in that there are cuts, zooms and camera movements in sync with the beat of the song, however there doesn't appear to be a connection between the video and the lyrics. The record label will have been satisfied with the video as virtually the whole video contains shots of the band. Also the bands motif of Jamaican descendance and influence but British patriotism is shown through the large Jamaican flag and the Union Jack morphing together behind the stage. This gives the band a motif which can be carried through into their other videos. The Male Gaze is also present in the video, as there are female dancers throughout the video.

Analysis of a Music Video: Stone Sour - Through Glass

In order to know the forms and conventions realised through music videos, I will analyse music videos from various genres and compare and contrast them.

The first music video I will look at is "Through Glass" by Stone Sour. This video was produced by Roadrunner Records and directed by Tony Petrossian.

The main feature of the video is the way in which the special effects are used to aid the representation of both the band and the people from Hollywood that they're mocking. Throughout the video people who represent Hollywood stars who claim to be meaningful people are shown to be cardboard cut outs, showing the message of the video is that those people are shallow and fake. The representation of the band is therefore the opposite of this, showing they are trying to portray themselves as deep and unique people. This message will have been chosen because of the target audience of the band, being people who tend to stay away from the mainstream.

The editing and the camera shots are used to give the video a very smooth, flowing feel. This reinforces the idea of Hollywood being fake, as it compares the smoothness of the camera motion in this Hollywood mansion with the flawlessness desired by individuals trying to make themselves beautiful. In stark contrast to this the band stand very apart from the other people, visually.

We can see several of Goodwin's key points in this video, such as intertextual reference, as the Hollywood sign changed to say 'Hollowood' shows a distortion of an iconic symbol. The lead singer, Corey Taylor, spends much of the video looking directly into the camera, and so the notion of 'looking' is used here. However, the other aspect of 'looking', being the voyeuristic view of women, is mocked in this video by showing attractive women but presenting them as shallow. Clearly from the performance sections of the video the record label have been able to get many shots of the band in, and their contrast to the other people in the video creates a motif for them, fulfilling another of Goodwin's key points. The video also follows some genre characteristics of rock music videos, such as including a lot of performance shots and by mocking 'the man'.

Goodwin's Theory

Media theologist Andrew Goodwin identified several key features of music videos which are used in almost all contemporary videos.

1 - There can be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, either amplifying or contradicting them.

- This can mean that the themes, mise-en-scene or events of the video match with lyrics of the song, to help put across the message of the song and video.

2 - There can be a relationship between the music and the visuals, either amplifying or contradicting them.

- This can mean that the cuts and edits of the video are in sync with the rhythm and beat of the song matching cuts or effects to specific drum beats or notes.

3 - Music videos have genre characteristics.

- This means that certain features are expected out of a video depending on the genre of the music, for example a girl band is expected to have dancers and close ups of the singers, whilst a metal band is expected to have performance shots of guitars and drums cut to a fast beat.

4 - Often due to the demands of the record label, artists videos will include many close ups of the artist and will often develop motifs that recur across multiple videos.

- This allows the record label to promote a set image for the band, which will help target audiences empathise with the band.

5 - There is often an emphasis on 'looking'

- This means that the 'male gaze' is often used to attract a male audience. The male gaze is a focus on presenting things that appeal to men. This most often means a voyeuristic view of, and an objectification, of women. The emphasis on looking also includes the artist looking directly into the camera. This helps the audience connect with the artist.

6 - Often there can be intertextual references.

- This means that music videos reference other forms of media, most commonly film, but sometimes television and classic music videos.

History of the Music Video

Music videos go back a long way, as far as the 1940's with musician Louis Jordan making short films for his songs, and some forms of videos and images to be played alongside songs going back even further, as far as the late 19th century. Music historian Donald Clarke says that Louis Jordan's videos were the ancestors of the modern music video. The idea for music videos stemmed from musicals from the 1930's - 50's, and some music videos reference this, such as Madonna's video for 'Material Girl', which resembles the scene for 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend' in the 1953 musical 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'. Musicals inspired music videos in ways such as showing the band or singer performing, but also importantly by including things such as dance sequences in sync with the music. This influence is very clear in contemporary music videos.

In 1957 Tony Bennet was filmed walking through Hyde Park in London whilst his song 'Stranger in Paradise' played. The film was then aired on US and UK television stations, and then in 1959 D.J. JP Richardson coined the phrase 'Music Video'. In 1961 Manny Pittson recording music, then filmed different scenes with artists lip-synching and edited the two together, for the Canadian television show Singalong Jubilee.

In 1965 the Beatles started making promotional videos for their songs so that they could be distributed and promoted without them having to make actual appearances. Their video for 'Help!' had many features used in virtually all modern performance based videos, such as playing with focus and camera angles and cutting to the beat.

Over time these techniques have been developed and invested in to produce the music video as we know it today. They have gone from simply recordings of the artists on stage to videos such as Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson's 'Scream' which cost $7,000,000. Often music video's attract very high profile names to produce and direct them, such as Martin Scorsese directing Michael Jackson's 'Bad'. Virtually every major song release these days has a video release as well, and is primarily used as a promotional marketing tool to increase sales, however often they can be heavily influenced by arts and have become an art in their own right.