Chosen Genre

When creating my music video, I have chosen to base it around the indie folk genre. I have decided to do this because my chosen song reflects the indie folk genre but also because I personally like that style of music.

The History Of Music Videos

What Is A Music Video?
A music video is a short film used to present a visual representation of a song. Music videos are usually used to promote and market a artists music. By using a music video, the audience is able to familiarise themselves with the style of genre of the artist.

In the 1920's Oskar Fischinger notorious for his abstract musical animations experimented with visual and sound synchronisation in the form of film making. 

Screen Songs are short cartoons which allow the audience to sing along with popular songs during that time period. Often the lyrics would be shown at the bottom of the screen with an animated ball bouncing over the words as the artist sung the song. This allowed the audience to interact with the artist and sing at the same time as the artist. By encouraging the audience to learn the words of the song, it made the songs more popular and also promoted the singer to a larger audience. During the early 1930's musicians where featured performing their singles on-camera in sections during the   cartoons viewing.

Louis Jordan in the 1940's created several short films to help promote his music. "Jumping At The Jubilee" featured live musicians which involved the artists singing and playing saxophones and various other instruments. Unconventionally seen on modern day music videos jazz dancers are seen performing in front of the artist although in today's videos the backing dancers would usually be seen in the background. It is obvious from the video that during this time period the live music and dancers was just as important as the artist himself. This is due to the short film entering the audience but also promoting the music.

Michael Jackson's short film Thriller is notorious for changing the concepts of music videos. At the time being  the most expensive to make music video, it incorporated special effects and high technological recording equipment. To go with the short film, 'The Making Of Thriller' was a home made video also released in 1984. This was the first ever video about the making of a music video and gave the fans access to behind the scenes of music videos.

In contrast to music videos in the 1920s, modern day music videos are solely used to promote the artist rather then to also promote a film or inside a film such as Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii (1961) where he played a protagonist and the singer. With artists today, they use music video to express themselves and this is a common way for the artist to interact with their fans. Also in some music videos today, there is a theme that is followed such as artists like The 1975 who up until Sept. 2nd 2013 filmed their music videos in black and white and Marianas Trench for the release of their album 'Ever After' created non-chronological narrative music videos for all of the songs on the album to allow their target audience to question which order the sequences they go in and what actually happens in the narrative. This allows the artist to create hype for their band and really draw up a large release for the next installment of the music video.

Lyric Timings

Lyrics Analysis

Brief Specification

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band; 
• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package); 
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package)