Over the years, media has become a lot more visual. For example, one main source of media, television, has been taken 'advantage' of in a sense and maybe even taken over by music today, as it is being used as a marketing device for promotional and artistic purposes, and enables producers today to make sales out of it by creating certain channels which will their target audience will watch, which now has been split over more than 50 channels featuring all different genres of music. Although, before music videos were as advanced as they are now, artists would be in feature films, which looked a lot more like "documenteries" in which an artist/bands song would be played at parts. This developed more and more into looking like actual music videos.
For example:
Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back 1965
This was a short clip featuring Bob Dylan which was put at the beginning of the film. For what purpose? To make music visual, so that the fans could see Dylan, making music today more centered on image and appearence today rather. In terms of mise-en-scene it isn't very conventional in what we see in todays music videos, as the long shot is very stable and doesn't move around at all throughout the whole song. Furthermore, the cards are the only thing that are moved around in this shot, making us focus on the certain lyrics written on the card.
The Who - I Can't Explain 1965
A promotional clip. And in comparison to todays music videos, very simple.
Although, It wasn't until 1974 that music on Television was actually taken notice of. The TV shows, Countdown and Sounds played a very significant part in music behind heard on the TV. Therefore when Top of the Pops started in 1975, it became extremely popular as it enabled people to see their favourite artists perform. When Queen released the video for Bohemiem Rhapsody in 1975, the performance and mise-en-scene in the video became very important, and now very conventional with todays music videos. In Bohemiem Rhapsody the emphasis given on the performance is shown by using certain shots involving the instruments and quick camera shots. Furthermore the dramatic costumes, which today is a very important part mainly in mainstream music (RnB, Pop) as it creates the artists image or even their character in a sense. Lady Gaga is a very good example of this, as she takes the performance and imagery in her videos very seriously, hence the millions of album sales and views on YouTube across the world.
Although, Michael Jacksons "Thriller" in 1983 was the most successful beginning of the mainstream trend, being a whole 14 minutes long with a clear story/short film in the video, which todays stars have took on board, hence why most mainstream videos have a story included in them instead of them performing, for example Ed Sheeran - A Team. In contrast to the more Alternative bands, which usually do just have the video of their performance in high quality.
All Time Low - I Feel Like Dancin' 2011
Music videos have majorly evolved for the purpose of selling to make money (which was it's original purpose) even for bands such as The Beatles, but not to the extent of today. This video explains how the music industry and artists have become more central and even selfish in a sense, on just making money, rather than focusing on the musical talent, hence why so many catchy, meaningless dramatic mainstream songs and videos seem to sell more today (1 hit wonders). For example this video shows that, product placement, sex appeal and copying other artists image/ideas is too common in todays music industry. Although, in this advert they are suppose to be making fun of product placement by blatantly advertising an energy drink, but they are actually subliminally advertising it to us, reverse psychology?
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