History of the music video

Arguably the earliest example of a music video is Bessie Smiths 1929 st. Louis Blues, Bessie starred in a very short film called st Louis blues which featured a dramatized performance of the song, this early music video was shown in cinemas for around four years straight. It is arguable that this is the first appearance of some kind of music video. After this is is arguable that the first major star from music videos was Bing Crosby especially with his performance of "young at heart" which can be found on you tube and can be classed as some sort of music video, most of his fans however saw him performing his songs in a film and even in a TV special and due to all of this he was seen as the biggest star in the world during the 1940's that is until Frank Sinatra replaced him, fans saw Sinatra in many different TV special and concerts which were displayed on the television and they also saw him in films such as High society and new York. The next major music start of note in my opinion would be Elvis Presley with the birth of rock and roll, he could also be seen in films and on the television however one of his main appeals was the fact that he performed at concerts but only in the USA meaning that people would travel from all over the world just to see him and the start of rock and roll. The Beatle's are probably the best example of a musical sensation to date, they were a part of the top of the pops which created innovation and competition among multiple bands and record labels. These producers were limited to a number of videos which they could show so a good video would up the sales as people would want to see that video the next week. The Beatles were the first group to take the music video to another level with films for strawberry fields forever and by using actual film techniques such as reverse film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing.

MTV launched in 1981 and the first video shown by them was Buggles video "killed the radio star" and by the mid 1980's videos had played a vital role in pop music marketing. Today however many say that people watch music videos for the aesthetic pleasure instead of the musical quality, Some people say that this is the result of corporate managers wanting sex appeals of both males and females in music rather than concentrate on the music itself.  

Don't go breaking my heart excercise (Elton John)

This is our newest version of the song and the one which i am going to be using in the blog as the first one was pretty bad and we did not end up with enough footage to edit the lip-syncing properly, so we decided that the best thing for us to do would be to go out and re-film the entire thing and re-edit it all together. As you can see from the music video above this turned out to be pretty successful and this in my opinion is our best one to date, i think however we could have improved with different camera shots as well as maybe a bit more movement and involvement from the actors themselves.

Sonny and Cher excercise

This is my very first attempt at lip-syncing to a music video, the video editing is done pretty well and the syncing of the audio to the video and the lip movements however there is a part in the film where it does not look like sam is signing at all, in the future we could improve on this by actually signing the song out loud to properly get the lip movements. 

Album art excercise

This is the exercise where we had to practice creating the album art and although these are not the right dimensions for the actual album art we had to create in the end, i mainly used this time to practice with the tools available in the actual piece of software. I mainly used this time to practice with the different types of layers and skills available to me. 

Production team

This is the team which i am going to be part of for this entire project, the team mainly only consists of me and destiny however we will be working in conjunction with another group and both of our groups will be help out one another and helping each other with the music videos by either being in both of them or helping out each other with the camerawork.

brief

The task for this year of Media Studies is to produce a promotional package for the release of an album to include a music promo video together with a digipak for its release on DVD as well as an advertisement for the DVD release, we must also include all of the planning, research, construction and the evaluation all on this blog.

My task is to produce:

¡  A music ‘promo’ video

¡  Up to 5 minutes

¡  Either working on your own or in a group of up to four members

My also need to produce:

¡  A ‘digipak’ (Six panels) for its release on CD

¡  A magazine advertisement for the digipak

 In addition to your ‘promo’ video you will have to produce:

¡  A critical evaluation

Welcome

Welcome to my A2 media studies blog, i am going to be making a promotional package for a new artist/band including a music video.

I am going to be charting my progress as i research, plan, contrast and evaluate my A2 portfolio, throughout year 12 i had learnt a lot from media studies so i am going to use this knowledge to make this blog even better than the last.