In the search for the definition of what makes a good music
video it is important to first explore what is a music video? The most common answer is that a music video
is a promotional device essentially a short film is released with the song to
encourage people to buy the song and for the simple nature of entertainment
purposes.
Music videos are now a lot more device in the way that they
are made they seem to be a genre within a genre. Music videos can have a
narrative structure where the film is a story and it could be one that is to do
with what the song is about. The video could also just be a choreographed piece
of work.
For a very brief grouping of videos it could potentially be
said that videos from the dance music genre are often just the video with the
lead singer preforming and a series of different dances whereas songs that are
more lyric based like modern day punk and alternative music there is a more
narrative structure generally speaking.
What can also emerge are versions of songs that are simply a
filmed version of the songs performance. Bruno Mars’s song “Locked out of
Heaven” is heavily performance based with cuts to scenes of the lead singer
Bruno doing various things but it is mainly just the song being performed.
It is said that the origin of film could potentially be
traced back to 1894 when the sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired an electrician George Thomas to use a light box and performers so
that images would be projected as the songs where performed live. Now this is
not necessarily the beginning of music videos but this is something that bands
still do today. There are several artists who during their concerts will have
images shown on a screen behind them. An interesting thing to look into the
group The Guerillas as they labeled themselves as an animated band and that is
what they used to make videos and I assume they would show at concerts.
The 1920s and the 1930s saw a different type of performance
to emerge and this was a market cornered by Disney who set their animations to
music the most famous is the Micky Mouse Fantasia. The interesting thing that
this shows is that Warner Bros. where actually effectively using their song
clips as promoters of songs that were going to be in their animated films.
Therefore it seems in this respect that the purpose of a music video had been
met and that was the idea of promotion.
In the 1920s there was also the use of lyrics across the
screen and a red bouncing ball over the words which encouraged audiences to
sing along with the performance. This is very similar to the modern day Karaoke.
In 1929 there was a dramatized version of a song that was
shot on two reels this was by the Blues singer Bessie
Smith. I think that this would have marked significance in the history
of music videos of when they started to be created.
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