Music Video Recipe

BTEC MEDIA WORK TASK 6/9/13 BEN DAVIS

70’s Music videos are generally just being filmed while on stage with tacky special effects. There are lots of pan and zoom shots of the lead singer and the other members of the bands. There is lots of duo singing through one microphone.

This is one of David Bowie's music videos. It mainly consists of Bowie singing and others with big hair and flair jeans. The set is just a stage and a dance floor where the audience are dancing to the music.

80's Music videos tend to me a mixture of the singers on stage and a story being told whilst the singer is singing. They began to experiment and started using more special effects than the previous decade. However, there is still the cheesy smile and dancing.

However, in this Michael Jackson music video it tells more of a story than just watching him sing, which was quite revolutionary for the 80's.

90's Music videos became more and more abstract, using different methods of filming and coincidentally making the videos as memorable as the song itself. Most of the 90's music videos had a story behind it. There was alot of new rap appearing in the music industry too, meaning there was a lot of generic rap conventions in the videos. Things like expensive cars, clothing and jewelry, attractive females wearing revealing clothing. This allured the male audience and was one of the main changes to music videos in the 90's.

Screenshot of Gangsta's Paradise, this song does lots of pan shots around the main singer and others in the music video. The lighting in this music video creates a darker atmosphere, which reflects the gangster theme.

In the 2000's there was a lot more story telling involved, for example, Britney Spears Baby One More Time is a very story telling music video. Costume and story-line became a priority in the music industry, as it seemed that the music videos were beginning to make the song more popular. So by giving the song a story-line and adding a video to portray it the sales of each song went up.

In the 2010 decade music videos are a lot more abstract, using different methods of filming for various strange effects. For example, the Katy Perry music video, Roar. The video is filmed from the perspective of the viewer, so it makes the view feel immersed in the experience of the video. Another example of a video being abstract is Naughty Boy song La La La. Lots of the shots are filmed as though they are from one of the characters first person perspective.

My Recipe

• I will need to have the lead singer singing in it, this is because for the past 60 years there has always been the singer as the focal point of the video. For example, in the 70's there was singers like Bowie who starred in all of his own music videos. In the 80's Michael Jackson was in his music videos, and so on. This will make the video have a main focus and the audience will have somebody to 'idolise'
• Needs a narrative to make the video more entertaining, this will make the video have more structure, so it will be easier to film and much more organised and entertaining. Also the story will need to have an abstract story, which will be more entertaining for the audience and get more views and sales.
• I will need to have an underlying theme that is conveyed throughout the music video, it should be linked to what is being said in the song.
• Although its going to have a storyline, I will try to make it as abstract as possible, this will make the audience want to know what is going on, and also much more memorable for them, therefore increasing the revenue the music video produces.
• There will be a large amount of dance within the music video, this is due to the fact that dance has played a huge part in music videos since the very beginning of them.
• There will be mild sexual referencing, this is something that have been used for the majority of music video history and is there primarily to open up the male audience range, thus increasing the revenue the music video will make.