april17rush-blog - Tumblr blog

[april17rush-blog]

Conclusion

Making a music video brings a large number of difficulties to consider. First of all, you need to reach an agreement with the musician. A lot of times there’s gonna be a lot of disagreements along the way, and your creative freedom will be restricted.

But it also gives you a lot of freedom to try new techniques and storylines in the time frame of a short video, without the need to write and develop a long feature film.

Music will always come hand in hand with video, as it helps to promote and distribute it to any part of the world.

Overall, music videos are a great marketing strategy, and a very viable area of opportunity to work in the future as a filmmaker.

[april17rush-blog]

Leaving Tomorrow 

I was really proud of how this music video was made. There wasn’t a lot of time for filming, but we managed to finish it in 2 days. The song is amazing, and the shots are simple but I think they were executed nicely. Unfortunately, the song will be unreleased as the singer doesn’t want it out, so I’m not able to share it on my social media, but I loved it.

[april17rush-blog]

First Music Video. You By Dan Morgans. This is not the finished version of what I wanted it to look like, but I just wasn’t satisfied with it so I decided to leave it like this.  I tried to do a video full of match cuts, and at the end I think that worked out nicely.  The green screen could be better, but what bothers me the most is the clone effect with the girl. 

[april17rush-blog]

Leaving Tomorrow

[april17rush-blog]

Second Music Video

[april17rush-blog]

Second Music Video

[april17rush-blog]

Parody Music Videos

Some music videos decide to make fun of certain styles, concepts or even artists. 

One of the most famous cases, is “Weird Al” Yankovic, a popular singer that built his career by making parodies of famous songs of the time with funny lyrics.

Another example could be Jennifer Lopez  with the song I Luh Ya Papi, it makes fun of sexism and the way most music videos portray women as an object to be admired and not as a person. 

[april17rush-blog]

Homage  Music Videos

An homage is a special honour or respect shown publicly.

Some artists decide to pay homage to movies, people, or even other artists.  Some of these are very subtle, and very had to find.

This wasn’t the first of its kind, but it started a trend for collecting the video tropes of recent years into one video. Look out for nods to Britney’s ‘Sometimes’, Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie in a Bottle’ and Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want it that Way’

[april17rush-blog]

Lyrical Music Videos

With the birth of Youtube, Lyrical videos became very popular in the platform.  A Lyrical video is a little simpler than a normal one. It involves showing the lyrics of the song written, for the viewer to read, enjoy and in some cases sing in a karaoke style.  Here are some examples of this technique. 

[april17rush-blog]

00′s and 10′s

In the last two decades there has been a massive change in the industry and it all revolves around one thing; The Internet. 

in 2006 the platform Youtube was created, a website where anyone can upload, and stream unlimited videos. This opened the door for anyone to create and distribute a music video. Production for music videos became more and more expensive to differentiate amateur music videos from professional ones.  

A new factor impulsed artists to create better music videos; Virality.

Defined as the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another; the quality or fact of being viral. This impulsed a lot of unknown bands to the mainstream. 

There was also the possibility to revisit music videos from the past decades, giving some artists a second change of success and fame, like the famous case of Rick Astley with his popular song, “Never Gonna Give You Up” 

Thanks to the wide variety of music videos and filmmakers, there was the chance to explore and unlimited variety of concepts and type of music videos. With each new release there was a new possibility of making a defining music video. 

Some of the most popular music video directors are Trish Sie, Dave Meyers and Nabil Elderkin

[april17rush-blog]

The decade of the 90′s

Although music videos were born in the 50′s and the 80′s made them widely available, the medium truly thrived – both creatively and commercially – with 90s music videos.

This was the decade where directors would really experiment and eventually grow to become successful film directors. This decade saw the birth of big names in the industry like Spike Jonze, Spike Lee and David Fincher.

Hip-hop music became more common, and music videos was a great way of making it available to the public. 

Narrative music videos became more common and actors and models would make appearances as there was money to be made in the medium.

Music videos became contained stories, where the image and the sound would both tell different stories. 

[april17rush-blog]

The beginning of MTV and the 80′s

1981 Was a big year for music videos, as one of the biggest platforms for music video distribution was invented, MTV (Music Television) a channel solely dedicated for music videos. 

The first music video broadcasted was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles, a very ironic title that prophesizes the impact that it will have in the music industry.

Prior to this, the only way of watching music videos was through very specific shows or going to the cinema. This changed the game completely and revolutionized the music video as we know it today.

It was common for videos of the 80′s to mix animation with live action, the costumes were influenced by the decade’s trends, and there was a lot of dancing involved with big and elaborate dances like Michael Jackson´s.

They were also greatly influenced by sci-fi, as the decade was full of Science fiction pieces, like Star Wars, E.T. and Back To the Future.

Narrative and concept videos started to be more frequent, most videos stop using just a performance by the singer or the band, and started to focus on different concepts and techniques. Big music video directors started to appear and had more creative freedom. Like Michel Gondry, Marcelo Anciano and Steve Barron.

[april17rush-blog]

70′s

In the 70′s the first television shows dedicated to music videos started to appear. In America they had shows like American Bandstand (Which actually started in 1952) and Top of the Pops in the U.K (Which actually started in 1964)

These shows popularised music videos and made them available to anyone with a television. 

With the introduction of music videos there was also the opportunity to make better music videos, spend bigger budgets and treat them as a different piece of art and not just as a way of distributing a song to the masses. Now a song and a music video came hand in hand. 

Following trends left by The Beatles, 70′s artists were able to experiment a little bit with their music videos, using different attires, locations and effects.

It got easier for music videos to be seen, so most artists were investing more money in them so their songs would become more popular, although most of them were only performances with bands playing.

One of the most populars music videos of the 70′s is without a doubt Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. It’s not only one of the most popular songs of the era, it’s also one of the best known music videos ever.

[april17rush-blog]

60′s

In the 60′s, one of the biggest band of the whole music history started. The Beatles.

The Beatles started doing music videos for movies, just like Elvis would do in the 50′s, these would be way more complex, with effects and better production design setting a trend for future music videos of the next decades.

It started being more common for artists to create music videos for their pieces, although it was still not the norm as the only place to watch these would be in the cinema.

Some of their songs would get music videos by playing live on tv.

[april17rush-blog]

40′s and 50′s

Thanks to the ability to synchronise sound and film, the first music videos started to appear in feature films. These were part of the story and are still very primitive compared to today’s videos. 

Popular singers like Elvis Presley would release films along with their music, like jailhouse rock. 

The cameras made a lot of sound, so they couldn’t record the actual song while doing the music video. The bands and singers would have to lip sync to the song.   

The music videos were very simple, just performances with the singers with a band and sometimes a choreography. 

The only way of watching these would be watching the movies in the cinema.

[april17rush-blog]

Steamboat Willie

In 1928, after the introduction of the talkies and the ability to synchronise sound  Walt Disney created what would later become his most important attribution to film, Mickey Mouse. Steamboat Willie became the first appearance of the loved mouse, it features music in it, and is arguably one most important animated shorts as it can be considered the first animated music video of all time. This would later inspire a series of animated shorts known as “Silly Symphonies”  

[april17rush-blog]

The First Music Video

In 1927 the film “The Jazz Singer” revolutionised both the music and the film industries by being the first feature length film with synchronised sound.  There were several sequences with synchronised dialogue, and it features 6 songs performed by Al Jolson. It was produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. This would set a precedent for music videos. These songs are considered to be the first type of music videos, as it was the first time there was synchronised music and film.