According to wikipedia, the first form of music video came as the illustrated song. This was first attempted by Edward Marks, Joe Stern and George Thomas in 1894 to promote their song the little lost child. As televisions were still a long way off in those days, the process of illustrated song involved projecting a sereis of still images onto a screen for people to watch. Back then, I do not believe that Goodwin and Fraisers conventions of a music video were relvant, or existant for that matter.
When TV was introduced, MTV hit the screens, gracing the nation with what we may call, the first, modern music videos. The first video ever to be shown on mtv was The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star. The genre of this song is very hard to categorise but would probably ultimatly be called synth pop. The video is very eperimental and very wacky. There is no one theme. The shot locations vary from broadcating rooms to proper sets.
Although Pete Fraser only wrote about the conventions in 2005, even this video does follow some of the characteristics that fraser talks about. The video makes use of the tempo of the track and often jumps between scenes between the verse and chorus.
Goodwin also published his conventions of music videos in 2003 however Video Killed The Radio Star did infact form a relationship between the lyrics and the video, between the music and the visuals, and most importantly promote the artist.
Other iconic music videos come from Artists such as the late great Michael Jackson and bands such as Queen.
In 1982, Michael Jackson released the video for 'Beat It'. This was very popular with the public because he was already a very well established artist but also, the music video involved things that people get a thrill from watching. Their is lots of dancing, a lot of conflict and is generaly very busy. For it's time, this video really did push the boundries of what was technilogically possible which also added to the excitement to the audience.
Queen's video for Bohemian Rhapsody came from 1975, so seven years before Michael Jacksons video for Beat It. Although, similar to Michael Jacksons video, the Queen video used technologies which were extremely modern and possibly very expensive for the time. According to wikipedia, the video was filmed in just four hours at a cost of £4500, which today, seems a minute figure in comparison to the multi million dollar videos released now, but in 1975, £4500 was a monsterous amount of money.
Over time, typical conventions of music videos have definatly changed. As technology has become more advanced and also the industries involved have become wealthier, music videos have become more experimental and more creative. Bands such as The Gorillaz have pushed the boundries of what is technologically possible. Videos for major bands are less orientated around performing the song eg Bon Jovi, Living On A Prayer or Van Halen's Jump and focus more on bright sets, dancers and technology eg Just Dance by Lady GaGa.
By Richard
No comments:
Post a Comment