Independent Learning- Music Video Factsheet

The purpose of music video is the digital age

The purpose of music videos is to sell the media product. It can also help to sell the album the particular artist has released or in some cases any films which are being released. An example of this would be the song 'We Own It' by 2 Chainz, Wiz Khalifa. this was a very popular song and reached high up in the charts and was played in the cinema of the film Fast and Furious. This helped to promote the film as well as the film promoting the song.

                                                                                                                                                           
When the audiences were to buy this song via the Apple website, it would also display a picture of the film as the cover. This again helps to promote the film because it is making the audience aware this film exists.

Here is the picture. It shows the actors involved with the film and also shows what genre the film is because of the conventions used. From this you can clearly see that this song is trying to promote the movie which goes along with it.
The song itself is linked with the movie because you would expect them to go with each other. From the video above you can see that the song is very fast paced and the lyrics link it what some of the film is about.







Music videos is also an odd way to promote the song. This is because with this particular media product, you are showing the whole audience the song right until the end and giving them the full product before they have even bought it. This is different to how brands of coffee for example will show their product as desirable but the audience can't actually taste the coffee until they have bought the product.
Until about 8 years ago, this would not be much of a problem to the music industry due to music videos only being shown on shows such as Top of the Pops which had to be approved by the record labels but since the new technologies and video hosting sites such as YouTube, it means that the videos are easy to watch because they can be uploaded by anyone and watched easily via iPods, iPhones, iPads etc. All you would need is a source of internet and you would be available to it as it is at no cost. This meant to the industry that if people could access these videos for free and that easily, the audiences will just watch the music video instead of buying the song so the record labels are losing out.
Record labels have been trying to tackle this problem by using copyright but they worked out that this is time consuming and expensive. Instead, artists have their own YouTube channel now and will have links to legally download music on places such as iTunes.
This is important that there is links because with the new ways to illegally download music such as 'YouTube Converter', it will mean audiences have more of a chance of buying it legally therefore the record labels can profit.
The three major record labels in America (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Abu Dubai) teamed up to create Vevo which displayed music videos online and they would receive all the money for advertising as there is no third party people putting videos up and getting money from it as well like on YouTube.

I have found all this information out by one of my teachers creating a page about this information. From this it has then enabled me to research into more depth in order to find out things which were not mentioned on this page. It has been helpful to find out this because when it comes to making our films digipack etc. we may choose to go down that root.
It is also helpful to know the background of music and how piracy has affected it. If we was to actually distribute our music video then this would help us as we would know the places to distribute it in order to profit as much as possible.

Initial Ideas On Our Music Video

What Is a Magazine Advertisment and Why Is It Used?

A magazine advertisement does what it says in the title. It is an advertisement in a magazine. For our coursework we will be creating one for our artist. The importance for an artist to do this is because it is going to advertise the album or song you are bringing out. Is it allowing audiences to be aware this song exists and will hopefully promote it as they will want to buy or download it. It is important you have a professional looking advertisement because it is showing off the song. If it looks professional then it is showing people that the song is going to be professional.

Analysis of Student Films

Daniel Cope - I'll Show You New York - Jenna Bolingbroke

The genre of this music video is maybe a slow pop/soul. It doesn't have a particular genre that it fits into as if it was pop it may be more upbeat but there is nothing else it would be classed as.
The narrative is that there is a young couple who have broken up and they are reminiscing of the good times they used to have for example going to the beach.

A black and white filter was used at the start which connotes there is going to be negativity within this music video. As I starts quite negative it is showing the Todorov theory of it starting with a problem and the filter comes back at the end showing it ends on the problem as well. I found it quite unexpected at the end where the couple walk back past each other but did not say anything and just ignored each other because I thought there may be a happy ending where they make up but it surprised me it ended negatively.

The video shows a theme of love with some tension. You can tell that the love is still there as they are still thinking of each other however they are broken up so there is still issues with their relationship.
As this is only a student film they could not use the actual artist of the song in their music video but the male character was used to be the artist as he does some lip synching from time to time. I thought this was quite good because it is a hard thing to do and it looked fairly realistic.

This music video follows Andy Goodwin's theory of where there is a link between the lyrics and the visuals. This was shown when the artist sang about a 'skyline' and it showed a skyline. Although this shot underneath might not have been perfect, you could see what they were trying to show and for a student film they are showing the idea is there.

This video had a variety of different locations where it was shot which is good because it shows they out a lot of effort into making it and the audience didn't have to look at the same shots throughout the clip. this is good because if the audience are looking at the same shots they will eventually get bored which isn't going to help promote the song which is the purpose of the video.
A lot of the video was shown at the beach of the couples. This location is stereotypical for young couples to go to because it is a fun place to go to and you will often see a lot of music videos with similar narratives at the beach.

The lighting throughout the clip was naturalistic and quite bright because they were reminiscing on the positive past. At the start and end of the video a black and white filter was used to make everything look grey and negative which connotes the characters were sad and not as happy as they used to be.

A problem I found with the camera work for the music video was how shaky the camera was. As soon as I noticed this I looked the whole way through and this was consistent. The camera shots were good but this was definitely a problem because it made it look quite unprofessional when they had used a good use of shots.

Lots of mid shots were used to show the couple together so you could see both of them and how happy they were. There was also close ups throughout the negative parts of the video so the audience could see the facial expressions of the characters and see they were upset.
In particular I saw a shot with the artist playing the guitar. He was trying to look like the artist whilst lip synching. I think that he done a good job because it is a hard thing to do and he managed to make it look realistic and pull it off.




The editing for this music video was good. It had frequent cuts which went with he music and you could tell they had spent a lot of time doing the editing. The frequent cuts also meant that it gave the audience new things to look at and would have kept them interested within the music video which is important.
It was quite slow editing however which suited the song because it was a slow song so it meant it would have to have slow cuts. This however picked up for the chorus when the music started to pick up pace which is good because it shows the link.

The target audience for this music video is quite wide because it is a popular genre and the video its self is about love and romance which lots of people can relate themselves too. If audiences can relate themselves to this then it means they might be more interested in the music video and more engaged.


Frick Park Market- Mac Miller

The genre for this music video is hip-hop. This song doesn't have a clear narrative but shows a variety of shots of teenagers having fun and messing around which they are stereotyped to do. It is shown to be a fun video which is aimed at people their own age so they can relate to this video and it is shown as exciting. The video uses lots of frames and is primly fast paced editing which helps to identify the genre it is. I think this student film has done really well with this because they made sure that the music video matched the song and it was relevant. I think this music video is what was wanted from the song.

The characters played in the part were good because they again matched the music video, he is what you expect to see within the music video. You can see that they planned what this actor was to wear within the music video as they have used props such as the snapback with clothes that are stereotypically used by teenagers which are seen to be mainstream. People who are in this teenage bracket would look at him and class him as quite 'cool' and would maybe want to be him or act like he does. If this was say an 80 year old women in the music video instead, it may look a little odd and make the music video look of a poor quality as the students haven't thought about who is going to star in their video and have just got anyone in.

This video also used Andrew Goodwin's theory of where the lyrics match the music video. An example of this is where the lyrics said "my socks stay blue" whilst showing a close up of someone's blue socks.

This is not the only time this happens in the video but they have followed this theory throughout in order to help the audience watching understand what the lyrics are saying. It works as an aid to understand what the artist is talking about.

This music video used a large variety of shot compositions as well as locations. This is one of the most important things to do in a music video of this genre because that is one of the generic conventions. It used hundreds of quick shots of all compositions which was aided with the editing. It used jump cuts within the editing which were used effectively and could be the reason as to why they got full marks on their piece.

This was potentially my favourite bit of the editing because when watching it, it flowed really well and it worked. This would have been hard to do but they have pulled it off well. This editing has helped me give me some ideas of what I could do in my music video because I wouldn't have thought about doing things like this. It has widened what I could use in my video and has given me something to think about.