Understanding The Purpose of Music Videos.
Music videos are a short film combining both a song and mental imagery, made for creators promote what they’re exploiting for example, fashion music videos are mostly created and used as a marketing point meant to advertise the sale of their clothing. Music videos generally have a distinctive story line and also tackle social issues, to gather the audience and capture their attention about the song or album persuading them to buy or stream it. Music videos are a method for creators and directors to specify their creativity. Music videos use a large variety of artistry and designed to market their music video.
Music videos have a specific target audience, which means that the music video was aimed at a specific group of people, for example the song "Baby Shark" is aimed at young children. "Baby Shark" uses simple lyrics to enable the children to sing along. In the video each shark colour represents each member of the family. At 0:31 the baby shark is yellow, this represents happiness and fun as babies portray these traits. Mummy shark is pink at 0:38, pink represents sweetness which could portray that mothers should be sweet for their baby. 0:46 shows that daddy shark is blue which represents masculinity. At 0:53 grandma shark is salmon which could show that she is old and frail. The music video also incorporates dance moves to engage the target audience. Baby Shark generated over a billion streams in over a short period of time. The music video shows bright and vibrate colours to make the video more engaging and happier, this makes the kids feel energised whilst watching and singing along to "Baby Shark." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w
Music videos include taglines to spread awareness on social issues, for example Michael Jackson's "Heal The World" video demonstrates world disruption which include world hunger, and war. Throughout the whole video Michael Jackson focuses on the main disruptions of the world. From 0:00 and 0:45 the video shows young children in critical conditions due to war and eruption in their country. From 1:06 the video shows a series of events of war and violence, but at 1:04 and 1:18 it shows children playing and having fun despite their living conditions. The settings show that children are living in deserted areas without food and water, but are surrounded by the army force. Children at 3:12 are all holding white flowers, which represent peace and purity, they are all running towards the people that are trying to keep them safe the army force which shows that they only want unity between one another. The army then throw their guns and weapons on the floor (4:10) to show that violence is not the answer. At the end of the video there is a tagline that says "HEAL THE WORLD." Michael Jackson tries to spread a message of trying to save the world for our children before it's to late. The video shows very intense scenes of explosions and children being in poverty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWf-eARnf6U
The video used for Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ heavily represent police brutality. The opening scene shows the singer dancing with exaggerated movements and facial expressions; he then shoots a black man with a bag tied on his head. Childish Gambino was accompanied by a small sum of kids dressed in school uniforms dancing throughout the “This Is America” video, smiling and dancing as violence breaks out behind them. This is supposed to represent the dancers distracting the general public from all the disruption in the world. Childish Gambino experiments famous dance moves inspired by hip hop and African moves, along with the South African Gwara Gwara dance. Toward the centre of the music video, a choir sings promptly in a happy tone before Childish Gambino executed them all (1:32). The massacre represents the 2015 Charleston shooting in which resulted in the killing of nine black people in a church basement. The costumes worn in the video by Childish Gambino are the beige trousers that represent the clothes that are worn by confederates.
Extension Of Income
Music labels rely on artist to produce music and music videos so that it will earn the music label a great deal of money, and the income increases built upon on how well the streams do on platforms such as YouTube, iTunes and Spotify. A music video will give the audience a understanding of the artist artistry and it may encourage the audience to go see them live in concert or festival line ups which is also another source of earnings. When a video is made, there is a majority of people who get a share of the expenses which is the production company, the artist and the broadcast companies. Michael Jackson's Thriller earned over £500 million in sales and it was because of the popular music video. Michael Jackson's music video for Thriller was one of the first video productions. The Thriller video cost around $100,000 to produce, with a budget of $500,000. MTV paid $250, 000 and Showtime $300,000 for the rights of the music video, Michael Jackson would only take upfront cost. VHS sold $29.95, and they sold over 100,000 advance orders in its own right. Thriller sold a total of 9.5m of home videos and DVD sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA
Extension Of Outlets
Music videos have become one of the biggest outlets for music. Music channels such as MTV and VHI are some of the main outlets for music videos which you can find them on SKY Channels and Virgin Media. Music videos can be sold on DVDs, they can be done as seasonal soundtrack or a visual album for recognition. Artist such as Beyoncé released her first visual album in 2013 by her record label Parkwood Entertainment. Websites like YouTube are a major extension of outlets, every artist uploads their music videos onto YouTube for recognition and promotion. Platforms like iTunes allows people to buy and stream songs, albums and music videos from all artist.Synergy
"The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects."- Oxford Dictionary
Companies within the film industry promote the movie by using A-list artist to sing the main songs for the movie soundtrack. This gives both the artist and the film the recognition and profit, this is gained by both people who enjoy the movie itself and people who like the artist that is recognized for the movie soundtrack. An example of this is Beyoncé's soundtrack or the Lion King Remake. Beyoncé got the recognition for both, the movie and the soundtrack. Lion King is one of the biggest Disney franchise in the world, and having Beyoncé as a leading role and producer and the main artist of the Lion King Remake soundtrack, gained Lion King Remake as one of the biggest remakes in the world and the highest earning movie with over $1 billion in its first week of release, and hitting a number 2 spot on the billboard album charts.Promotion of a Song
An artist releases a song/track to promote the artists new era of creativity in the music industry or to promote a upcoming new artist or album. An artist promotes a song using social media. Social media such as Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, have a large variety of people of all different ages. Promoting your song on social media allows your music to be shared on different platforms by people who enjoy your music. Promoting through a music video can include techniques of using dance moves as a way of including a variety of people of different ages and backgrounds to copy your dance moves from the music videos. For example Silento released his music video for "Watch Me" and it gained a lot of promotion and a large variety of audiences who enjoyed the dance movies, this gained the video to get over one billion views. 0:00 seconds into the music video the artist starts the music video with the famous dance moves the "whip and nae nae," in the frame, the editor incorporated videos of the general public dancing along to the song. Between 0:00 - 3:20 the video has cameos of the younger and older generation having fun and dancing along as the song goes on, this promotes the music video as the viewers will see that this video shows that all kinds f people can get along and have fun together in a vibrant environment.
Promotion of an Artist Album
Promotion of a new artist or change in music direction or image
An artist that changed the direction/image of music is Nicki Minaj. Although Nicki Minaj wasn't the first female rapper, she was the first pop mainstream female rapper. "Your Love" is a song by Nicki Minaj, taken from her first studio album Pink Friday as a lead single. It was released on June 1, 2010 by Young Money, Cash Money, and Universal Motown. The beginning of the Your Love video 0:00, it shows Nicki Minaj in a red background which could foreshadow hatred, anger, warning or death, because at 0:45 and 0:53 it shows that both the actress and the artist are in love with the same guy which can represent anger and hatred towards each other, at 1:21 the actress has an angry expression and throughout the rest of the video they're battling for the same guy, at 2:32 the actress gave Nicki a warning of death, and at 2:45 they both have a samurai sword fight, and at 3:18 Nicki then gets stabbed in the stomach and dies. This promotes a change in music direction/image as this video represents a storyline video which was new for a rapper to do so.
Homage Music Video's
To pay homage means to pay respect or a special honour publicly. Artist usually pay homage to artist that have just died. P Diddy paid homage to Notorious B.I.G after he died. During the music video, at 0:00 you first see P Diddy driving on a motorbike and crashing at 0:11. This is a metaphoric way to express anger, pain and suffering over the fact that he lost a good friend. At 1:06 Faith Evens, Notorious B.I.G’s wife sings along to the chorus. 2:34 everyone in the video wears white suits to represent peace, as Notorious was shot by his enemies and they’re trying to spread awareness as everyone needs to be at peace with one another. At 2:47 Faith Evens is also wearing a white suit to represent their short marriage together as they only lasted 3 years. The music video was released in 1997. This song was released as a single from Puff Daddy album. "I'll Be Missing You" experiments The Police 1983 song "Every Breath You Take", with the chorus sung by Faith Evans.
Directors of the music videos are more or less authors of visuals. This is a theory that a film is the reflection of an artistic vision. For example music videos have themes such as romance and crime. Rihanna's "Man Down" video is a crime based music video, based on the actor which is the singer "Rihanna" killing a man for trying to rape her. The visuals are a movie like representation of a crime drama. The visuals show at 0:28 Rihanna shooting a man dead at the train station. At 0:47 the video then backtracks to the day before everything happened. At 0:51 it shows Rihanna riding around Jamaica feeling happy and cheerful. At 1:43 she then meets the guy she killed at the beginning. 3:38 she then starts dancing with the guy at a club, until at 4:24 he tries to start performing sexual acts on her, 4:30 she tries to push him off, but fails. before the end of the video 5:21 she finds her gun in her draw. The director of the music video successfully included the auteur theory and portrays the video as a short crime based film.The video was released in 2011. Anthony Mandler directed the music video for "Man Down" in April 2011 in Jamaica. Rihanna said that the lyrics of the song is a "strong underlying message for girls like me." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhy-RXkNo0
The overall purpose of a music videos is to use the platform to spread awareness on social issues and world issues. Artist like Michael Jackson use his music to speak up about world issues, his music videos for "Earth Song", "Man In Mirror " & "Heal The World", are prime examples of music videos that try to tack world issues. Examples for social issues are artist that promote woman empowerment and other social problems. Beyoncé made the song called "Run The World, Girls" which promotes feminism and empowerment. Although most artist purpose of a music video is to explore their own creativity.
