History of a Music Video - Miss Georgiou

History of a Music Video

Music videos are watched by thousands of people all over the world and over time have become increasingly popular with various audiences. Most people watch music videos through music channels on the TV or internet websites such as YouTube.
Music videos came into prominence in the 1980's when MTV based their format around the medium.

MTV

MTV was the first music channel and it was launched on August 1st 1981. MTV plays mainly dance and pop anthems which have been featured on the charts. The original purpose for MTV was to be "music television" and to play music videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, guided by on air personalities. However MTV now has various sister channels such as

• MTV Hits
• MTV Base
• MTV Rocks
• MTV Dance

The first music video to be played on MTV was "The Buggles" "Video killed the radio star" in the United States at 12:01 on 1st August 1981. It was also the first music video to be shown on MTV Classics in the United Kingdom on 1st March 2010. It was seen to be a great choice to be shown as the first music video played on MTV as the track topped sixteen international music charts, including the official single charts of the groups home country the United Kingdom.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website which was founded on the 14th February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. The website became extremely popular straight away with users uploading more than 65,000 new videos and delivering 100 million views per day in July. The website average nearly 20 million visitors per month who were said to be 44% female and 56% male with the 12-17 age group being the most dominant of them all. Over the years YouTube has become so popular over the world that various countries have their own versions of the site. These include countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Turkey.

This is an image of the top 20 most watched music videos on YouTube ranging from the years of 2007 to 2014.  The role of YouTube is to post music videos by various artists to make them easily accessible for a wide range audience. YouTube is extremely popular as it allows anyone to log on to the internet and search for any music video they may want to watch for free and in a simplistic manor. The most watched music video as of June 2015 is "Gangnam Style" by Psy which grossed 2,355,766,836 views from YouTube. The video was uploaded on July 15th 2012 and the music video is of the dance genre although it includes many elements of comical behaviour.

 
Gangnam Style

Gangnam Style is the most viewed music video on YouTube up to date. It is a performance style music video from the dance genre although the movements in the video can be very comical for the audience. The music video includes the very famous "Gangnam Style" dance repeated in various situations that can be deemed as comical for example in a horse stable, in a swimming pool and on  a train. Gangnam Style was very popular and became a chart hit. The music video was also such a hit as the audience wanted to not only learn the dance but to witness why it became so popular and most talked about dance and video.

Budgets for music videos

The budget for music videos varies on the different levels of production included within the music video. It also depends on the style of music videos as some style will require a higher budget to make the music video understandable for many reasons. For example in a narrative style music video more production may be required to ensure that the audience will understand the storyline and therefore understand the music videos and the artists intentions.
The most expensive music video to create as to date it Michael Jackson & Janet Jackson's "Scream" video.

The video cost around $7,000,000 to produce making it the worlds most expensive music video to create. There are many reasons why the "Scream" video was so expensive to produce. One reason is that the video contains 11 different sets to film different parts of the video therefore the setting came to around $5million alone. A lot of finance was spent of the CGI included in the video due to the video being set on a spaceship CGI was necessary to make it look believable and of some what good quality. More money was spent on the artists makeup, the choreography , lighting and morphing artworks. However some fans seem to think it is incredibly wasteful as the film quality doesn't come close to the quality of "Thriller", "November Rain" or "Victory".

Technology, Special Effects and The Development

The use of technology and special effects in music videos have developed massively over the years as the technology used in todays music videos were non existent in the previous years music industry. Especially the special effects as they have become greater and developed to a highly impressive standard over the last recent years. These include things such as CGI and green screens and also the use of quality cameras to produce high quality film works in the music videos.
We can understand the development of CGI and special effects by focusing on the differences between two music videos that were released in different years.

 

In this video "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits it illustrates the early stages of computer generated images. This is evident by the simplistic cartoon looking characters acting within the music video. We can tell that the development of computer generated images had only just come into play as the quality of CGI is at a very low standard compared to a music video with CGI created in a later era for example Katy Perry's "ET" video released in 2011.

In this video "ET" by Katy Perry the standard of CGI is unbelievably realistic and futuristic in the way it is present throughout the video. Unlike Dire Straits video "Money for Nothing" Katy Perry's futuristic idea of space and aliens gives the music video a great opportunity to rely on expensive yet high standard computer generated images to make the music video one of a kind and stand out against other music videos from the performance and dance genre. Without the CGI Katy Perry's song of "ET" would be difficult to understand without releasing a video with some sort of alien or space effect to fit in with the lyrics of the song.

Target Audience

The target audience varies throughout every music video as the artist has a key idea of who they want to target there music video at to try and gain the most views and publicity as possible to highly promote themselves and their work. For example Katy Perry mainly targeted her music video for "ET" at a younger teenage audience as it has an underlying idea of love and relationships which a younger audience could relate to. She also focused her music video on targeting this audience by using a great deal of CGI. This would target a teenage audience as they would be intrigued to watch Katy Perry herself fly around space and to be involved in a futuristic atmosphere. This could also relate to the fact that a younger audience could believe that more of a futuristic world like Katy Perry's music video could be introduced in their older years making them more likely to want to watch the video. Getting the target audience wrong for your video could be devastating for an artists promotion. For example if Katy Perry was to target an older audience of people aged 40-50 they may believe that her idea of space and aliens in unrealistic and immature and therefore would be discouraged to watch her video.

Music Video and Channels Views

Music video and channel views have increased massively over the years due to the increase of technology and easily accessible ways to watch them. The ways in which an audience can watch music videos have become more easily available to watch due to the increase of technology such as smart phones and tablets. We can understand that music videos are gaining much more publicity now due to the amount of views "Gangnam Style" received via YouTube. The audience can easily watch a music video through their portable devices such as a smartphone, tablet or computer with just an internet connection. Many social networking sites which also have their own apps such as Twitter, Facebook and Vine makes it easier for fans to keep up to date with their favourite artists and to also promote their work further by sharing , retweeting or downloading their work which makes it much easier for an artists work to be shared around the world through the use of technology and social media. This is great publicity for the artists due to social networking and smart phones great popularity in todays generation.

Music Genres

Music genres have changed massively over the years as some have failed whilst others have succeeded and gone on to create massive pop sensations. Many music genres that were about in the 70s were disco, funk, smooth jazz and punk rock which is still about today, however genres such as disco and funk have disappeared when pop, dance-pop and new wave were introduced in the 80's when Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Madonna became popular as they started to release songs such as "Thriller", "Like a Virgin" and "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" . The 80's was a very popular era for great music and some still get played in todays day and age as remembrance of the high quality music created in the 80's. However the music genres have changed completely now as genres such as house music, rap, gothic grunge and R&B. These music genres have become extremely popular due to the increase and popularity of famous artists such as Rihanna, David Guetta, Kanye West, Chris Brown and Beyoncé.

This research will help me with the planning of my own music video as it has helped me to understand the importance of the history of music videos. It has also taught me the way in which music videos have changed for the better and the things involved within the music industry and music videos which help to make them so popular with a particular target audience. It has made me realise the ways in which the music industry has changed with the increase of technology as the more recent year shave moved on. I have learnt that technology has made a massive impact in the way in which music videos gain their popularity through YouTube, Apps and Smartphones and therefore I will look into this when creating my own music video.