Planning Blog - Music Video motif

Music Video Motif

-John Harding&Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - The History of Music Video's

When music video's first started to be released in the 1920's the main role of them was to keep the viewer interested. They did this by using various techniques to achieve this they kept the video fairly short and by using controversial content within the video.


The majority of music videos are 3 - 5 minutes long this keeps the audience entertained. If the video exceeds this time the viewer is more likely to get bored and change the song. This is why music videos are fragmented into a lot of shots as they don't have enough time to develop a narrative story. They are made sometimes following what is said in the lyrics. 

As music video's developed they became more complex using different techniques being used such as the psychedelic music video's of the 1970's which involved special effects of an unreal reality it reflects society at the time as free love and drugs were at the peak of the era and this is reflected in the music videos of the time e.g Led Zeppelin and Beatles uses this. Nowadays, as the videos progressed they continue to reflect society, through different themes and genres, most nowadays are about good times e.g at a party or reflect society.

-Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - Analysis Of the History Of Music Videos

The main lesson learned from the entire history of the music video is that for a video to be popular and be watched it has to be controversial and break the mould, they had to do something that no one had done before, in the 1930's this was done through the use of black stars and by having women dressed inappropriately for the time dancing provocatively. In the 1950 and 60's it was done in the same way but women would show more skin as it was more accepted at the time. In the late 60's they looked for a new way to be controversial, it was the start of the psychedelic era with a lot of drug use this started to be represented in music videos as the videos became more out of this word and drug influenced. In the 1970's focus was put on breaking the boundaries of sexuality with more and more artists coming out people such as.

-John Harding-

Planning Blog - 1990's start of Hip-Hop

In the 1990's the definition of Hip-Hop began to change from being about life and struggles in the ghetto to violence and being flash, many Hip-Hop artists made it big at this time people such as NWA, Tupac and Snoop Dog. The video's promoted a gangster lifestyle and were full of drug use in the video and the lyrics, thwe videos would be full of flash cars, flash house and women the songs would boast about their lives and how they got to were they are today often through the use of violence. This was around the time that music video's got the budget of motion pictures and history repeated it self with less focus being on the lyrical content more so on the video.
            In the Example NWA "Always into somethin'"we see many examples of how it goes along with the trends at the time at the start we see a shotgun and then them robbing a liquor store, we also see gang culture as lots of black guys are together in warehouse surrounded by guns and flash cars. Throughout the video there is constant use of guns and violence.

-John Harding-

Planning Blog - 1980's MTV Is Born

Music Television (MTV) The is era was when artists starting competing with each to make promo videos, they were made in a psychedelic manor where the video would show animation and a true image of the band for example Dire Straits do this in their music video "Money for Nothing".

The opening of this video starts off in animation and the animated figure then enter the television which is of the band performing it then contrasts both real life image and animation as the band play animated guitars using special effects we see them wearing certain items of clothing cartoonised.

The arrival of cable TV opens the market for videos being available to the public and once MTV played there first music video in August 1 1981 and this was "video killed the radio star". Nowadays MTV now plays a lot of different forms of media and is now called Media Television.

-Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - 1970's Glamrock

In the 1970's this is where we see the history of the music video industry take another turn as we see promo videos made for bands, top of the chart bands especially used these. They were made for a substitution when the band was on tour. 

Glam rock emerged from psychedelic rock and Art rock genres of the late 1960's what made this era most controversial was the fact that it pushed the boundaries of sexuality, along with the arrival of outrages clothes, make-up and haircuts. The visual styles of the glam performers also played a major role in the representation of the age e.g Alice Cooper.

-Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - Psychedelic Era 1960's

In the late 1960's many rock artists made short films to go with their songs to promote their new albums, many of the video's are drug influenced and have lots of colour and out of this world images, many artists made popular music videos which fit to this stereotype such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan

-Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - Scopitones 1950's/60's

The scopitones were created in france in the late 50's early 60's, it was an early form of a video jukebox where a customer would insert money and a small screen would show a video to go with the song, but the scopitone machine could only hold four reels of film at a time. The machine itself was very expensive to make costing around £80,000 per unit but they were a big success although the film had to be changed every few months as people got bored of the songs or the film wore out. With the development of the scopitones more effort was put into developing a good video rather than making a good song.
           In our example video "Stacey Adams- Pussycat A Go Go" most of the camera shots have semi naked women as the focal point being at the front and centre of the shot the lyrical content isn't very good it is just very basic lyrics repeated over and over again. The mens hairstyles are typical mainstream hairstyles as at this point Elvis and Rock'n'roll was popular.

-John Harding-

Planning Blog - The Soundies of the late 1930's

The soundies were a three to five minute early form of a music video produced in hollywood in the late 30's early 40's, at the time the TV had only just recently been invented and very few people had one so the soundies were shown in movie theatres. They were very  controversial  often featuring black stars and revealed more of women than was appropriate at the time for public viewing. At the time slavery had only ended in America 40 years previously and many people objected to having black people in the soundies let alone having starring roles.
         In our example "Dorothy Dandridge- Cow Cow Boogie" we can see how at the time it would have been considered controversial as the main roles are filled by black people and women both of which would have at the time been considered second class citizens as slavery had only recently been abolished and women and black people still didn't have the right to vote. Also the women in the video are dressed in burlesque outfits. the music in the video is representative of the mainstream music at the time which was jazz.

-John Harding-