“Discuss the different purposes for music videos covering a range of examples from different era’s and genres” A Music video is a short film integrating videos and song, produced to promote a song and the artist. The artists use their music videos as a clever way to promote their song as it is a good form of advertising. It is clear that most of the music videos follow a story or a theme. This is called a narrative. This gives the audience something to follow throughout the whole video. Most videos use a broad variety of techniques to show off and let the directors emphasize their skills. Some of the skills included in different videos are animation in music videos such as take on me by a-ha. This is when the whole video or just some parts of it are created using CGI, or computer generated imagery rather than real life footage.
Another skill would be time lapsing. This is where the video is slightly longer but its sped up to make it look like a long video fit into a shorter space of time. Music videos also help the artist become famous as the video not only promotes their song, it also promotes their acting skills within the short video. The artists also use product placement to help promote themselves as an artist or another brand in particular. An example of this is promoting the ice watch brand in the video ‘Settle down’ by no doubt shown in the screenshot below.
There is also live footage videos. This is where the music video is mainly made up of footage of the artist/band performing live. This style of music video is mainly associated with indie and roc bands and in general louder music. It won’t be staged. The footage will normally be captured from a concert. You also have music videos that solely base the video on a story. This is a narrative. A good example of this would be ‘mirrors’ by Justin Timberlake.
Another style of music video is called illustrative. This is when the video is of the lyrics of the song. The words add a distinct style of music video to the industry and gives the editor the opportunity to use bright colours. A good example of a music video that uses the illustrative style is ‘cold water’ by Justin Bieber.
The style interpretive is when the music video tries to show the audience a deeper meaning to a music video. The video will have a narrative but the narrative will not be based on the lyrics of the song and it will not be obviously recognizable. An example of the interpretive music video is the video of ‘televators’ by The Mars Volta
Another style used in music videos is surrealism. This is where it tries to incorporate fantasy dreams and reality into one video. This is achieved by using unusual and bizarre images to
create a visual effect that people will see things that would never happen in real life. A good
example of this is ‘goodbye blue sky’
Another important stage of releasing a music video is being able to promote it so it can be successful. Artists spend a lot of money on promoting music videos to make sure it can be as successful as they hope. For example, a famous artist who was keen on promoting his video was Michael Jackson. He spent $7 million dollars on his music video ‘Scream’. He was
seemingly put to shame when 20 years later, David Bowie released ‘love is lost;’ for what seems to be the cheapest video ever. At just $12.99 and it still was a hit song.