History of the Music video and reasons behind the music video

The first Music video was hard days night by the beetles in the intro of their film in 1964.  Music videos were known as the advertisements for bands and were a good way of getting reputation early if you can just make one good music video, if its interesting it did not matter whether or not the music was good. It would make it to shows such as top of the pops or on MTV, and be made more famous.

The beatles

The beatles were a very popular British band in the 60’s and their movie hard days night helped expand their influence over to America due to the fact that its both a movie and that it uses songs composed by the band in the movie, so it shows the two main types of entertainment in one package, boosting their popularity by showing that they are normal nice guys and showing off their music at the same time.

Top of the pops

Top of the pops was a famous TV show that aired on the BBC and started in the 1960’s. It was to show the weeks top music and music videos of the week and it runned consecutively up till 2005. It was one of the best ways to gain popularity in Britain at the time because no other show ranked and shown a variety of music videos up until MTV. They would only show the first minute or so of the song so that is why music videos mainly focused on filling the 1^st minute with interesting stuff and the rest just being repeated or filler stuff.

MTV

MTV was a new music oriented channel which showed up in the 80’s and showed music videos all day, showing the top charts and the other music. Their first shown music video was video killed the radio star by the buggles, which ended up making the buggles famous, proving that MTV was a good way of advertising yourself.

Madonna

Madonna rose to fame through some of her controversial music videos at the time such as like a prayer, it had many things that were controversial at the time and not normally showed on public TV in the video. It promoted interracial relationships showing Madonna together with a African American man, in America racism was still a big thing in the 80’s so she risked herself making this video as this could have had dangerous reactions from more extreme people. The video also portrayed Jesus as a African American, which was another risk from the possible outcry of white Christians who have Jesus portrayed as a white man. It also showed burning crosses, which is mainly known for being done by the Ku Klux Klan, in combination with it being set in the south is an obvious poke at the group. The most impressive things to critics was to how Madonna made a song that talked about sacredness and profanity at the same time, and manage to make it catchy.

Michael Jackson
Micheal Jackson is known as the king of pop and his music is renowned worldwide which led him to his massive popularity and celebrity status before passing. He made many music videos to go with his songs such as beat it and man in the mirror, but the most well known one was the music video for thriller,when it came out, it was the most expensive music video in history with a budget of 1 million dollars, and it changed the way music videos were made and presented, it had a storyline, good costumes, extras, and choreography, they were all mixed together to make a spooky music video which was even shown before movies came on in the cinemas. music videos were not this well done beforehand, and it only served to boost his reputation even more, it definitely aided in the evolution of the music video.

Style and conventions of music videos have changed

In the modern day music industry, music videos are more common due to the industry growing and they have big budgets. They are still used to promote the artist, but now they can also be used to promote the director depending on how well they did. Music videos are also not just made for the music, they can also be made to make their own point, expressing the artists ideals or the directors views through a set narrative in the music video and through the music’s vocals in case the music was made for the video exclusively.  Nowadays music videos are also much more free as to what they are allowed to show the public, due to the lack of censorship that modern society has compared to the 70s/80s, there is a much wider variety of things that they can include in their songs and music videos.

One music video that was more focused on making a point was the controversial video M.I.A-Born free. In this video they show police brutality, sex, segregation and killing civilians including children, it was made to purposely catch the eyes and attention of viewers everywhere and send it viral.

While the controversy of M.I.A's music videos are one side of how music videos have changed in terms of freedom and how they are presented, Another artist called miley cyrus tooke another aproaach at the controversial type, however instead of showing violence and death, it was her showing nudity on the music video Wrecking ball where it shows herself riding a wrecking ball naked, this would definitely not be allowed  on public television 30 years ago, which shows how the public and music industry has changed and the way music videos have been adapted, the core intent of this music video however, is one that has been in the music industry forever, it was to establish her new identity, to make sure the public sees her as a different person in contrast to her younger years when she was a Disney star. Music stars such as madonna are famous for using her music videos to represent herself.

October feedback

You have worked effectively as part of a team and made sound progress in a quiet and methodical way. you seem to enjoy the course, particularly the practical elements and your skills are developing as the course progresses.

The web-log is a point of concern as the accuracy is lacking in research and the detail is not evident in the posts.  the web-log evidences your development and is assessed.  At the moment it is very thin.

There are deadlines on Friday 16^th October to get two assignments completed, neither of which are pass standard as yet.

It is essential that you carry on working outside of the lesson in extended learning activities.

Discuss your own work further in light of the principles of video editing.

SMART targets

Ensure that writing is punctuated with capital letters and grammatical sentence structures.

Add your bibliography

Spend time adding detail to the web-log. 

Timeline of cinema

Thomas edison

Lumierre brothers

george melies

Sergei eisenstein

History of editing

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was an inventor responsible for creating the light bulb, was also responsible fro creating a thing called the kinetoscope, a recording camera, in 1891, he acquired a patent for it and became the known inventor. He was the one who created in-camera editing, where no post production editing was done and it was all filmed and edited from shot to shot.

Lumierre brothers

The Lumierre brothers were famous for being considered the first filmmakers in history thanks to their invention the cinematograph which could allow for mass viewings of film unlike the kinetoscope which could only be viewed by one person at a time. All of their film editing was done in-camera, no post edits, they just started recording and stopped recording and that was it.
George Melies

George Melies was a French film director famous for his film, A trip to the moon. He was the first person to use dissolves in films, where there is a gradual transition to another scene instead of just cutting to it. here is a film produce by George called a trip to the moon
 
This was one of the first big budget movies filmed with props and a backstage in a studio, it showcases special effects such as the face on the moon and being launched to and back from the moon.
Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein was a Russian film director who pioneered in montages, he originally worked in theater until he saw a film and decided to go onto directing and editing films himself. His most well known film is battleship Potemkin, with the famous Odessa steps scene. A montage is a series of images placed next to or after each other to create a meaning, Sergei makes use of this in his film strike, using footage of cows being slaughtered in-between shots of a battlefield as an abstract way of saying that they were slaughtered like animals. I made a video with my group to try and create a montage, using myself, Micheal, and a lemon, without words, it shows that the lemon becomes a source of fun and when the lemon is lost, you can see that we were sad at the loss even without the use of dialogue.

Walter murch

Walter Murch was a film director responsible for directing the film Apocalypse now, a film set in Vietnam about an American assassin. He edited in a way in the opening so that he manipulated time and space by mixing shots of the main character in his room, staring at a ceiling fan, and having a helicopter transparent in the background with the rotors in the same place as the ceiling fan. the mixture of image's layered on top of each other could be used to represent that the character its a mess, confusing past events with reality, and you understand that when the half drunk whiskey bottle is also shown that he is not the best at coping with the past. even when he is in a safe place such as his room, he feels insecure and scared about the war in Vietnam. my group tried to create our own video about manipulation of time and space in it, you can see that we mixed the rule of continuity into it with camera techniques to make sure that the audience could follow onward without being confused. at the end the main character woke up, realizing it was a dream.

Fernando Meirelles

Fernando was responsible for directing a TV series called City Of God, a series that was set in Rio De Janeiro and made use of MTV style editing, a style of editing that made use of quick scenes and quick cuts, this was because it was to suit the MTV generation, which grew up learning to process more information than older generations and presumably lost interest much quicker, so the idea was to keep feeding information to keep them interested and keep viewers. my group made a video trying to imitate the MTV style editing of the city of god, we have a struggle and a chase scene close within each other with cuts showing the faces of the characters and the lemon, similar to the opening chase scene is city of god with the gang and the chicken, there is music added to the video to create a sense of chaos and intensity.
here's the city of god scene

and here's our chase scene

They both showcase parallel editing, where two points of view are happening at the same time and progressing with each other, to show two ends of the story, and when they meet it shows continuity.