Research: Media Institutes

There are four main media institutions that sign artists and produce and promote music(videos). EMI: This institution is mainly for a niche audience, meaning that a selected population would listen to the type of artists that are signed by them. They are one of the worlds leading companies and are a international institution. They own several smaller record companies such as Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Latin, etc. It also has signed many really big artists such as:- -Katy Perry -Gorillaz -Snoop Dogg -Lilly Allen -The Beetles -Coldplay -Beastie Boys Sony Music Entertainment: This company is much more mainstream. They provide music labels for international stars in a range of genres such as Hip-hop, country, classical, gospel, pop and rock. They also own several small labels including Arista, Columbia, Epic, J records and Legacy. Some of the artist with this label are:- -Avril Lavigne -Chris Brown -Foo Fighters -Willow Smith -Brittany Spears -Beyoncé -Willow Smith -One Direction -Pitbull Universal Music Group: This institution is probably the most popular and will definitely be classified as the most mainstream out of them all. They discover and develops recording artist aswell as markets and promotes music in a wide array of formats and platforms. Artists that are signed by UMG include:- -Akon -Florence and the Machine -Mary .J. Blidge -Busta Rhymes -Nicki Minaj -Justin Bieber -Adele -Cheryl Cole The final company is Warner Music Group. These are still mainstream but they aren't as popular as some of the other companies. It is an international institution, however. The spin off mini labels of this institution are Asylum, Atlantic, Cordless, East West, Elektra, Nonesuch, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner, Rykodisc,Sire, Warner Bros. They also help artists to achieve long term creative and financial success by providing the highest possible quality music. Artists under this institution include:- -Paramore -James Blunt -T.I. -Kid Rock -Plan B -B.O.B -Estelle -Bruno Mars.

Research: History of Music Videos.

1966-1968 The Monkees was a TV show. each episode included a specially made film segment that was created to accompany their songs that was used in their TV series. 1966: The Birth of Top of the Pops. The importance of TOTP to promote a single meant that artists had to creat competitive videos to compete for air time as TOTP has a limitation on the number of videos it showed as it was mainly performance based. 1967: Videos used techniques borrowed from film, such as film effects, dramatic lighting, camera angles and rhythmic editing. Modern Era of Music Videos. 1975: 'Bohemian Rhapsody'- Queen. The Modern Video. Created to replace a live performance on TV. The Beatles had created videos, however Queen were the first to create a video specifically for that song to be played on TV. Bohemian Rhapsody was the first made on video format. Therefore, the "first music video" would be accurate, as long as it isn't confused with "first promo film". 1970-1980: Songs and Moving Images. The key development of the modern music video was video recording with editing processes. High quality videotape recorder and portable video cameras enabled many pop aacts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, rather than using film which was expensive. 1981: MTV Launch and Development of Music Videos. The first video to be aired is Buggles 'Video Killed the Radio Star'. In the early to mid 1980's, artists started to use more sophisticated effects in their videos and added a storyline or plot to the music. 1984: MJ-Thriller. Concept of Short Film. A short film is a music video that has a beginning, middle and end. Jackson's Thriller took the music video format to another level. Top of The Pops begun to censor video content. Some artists would even produce video with the intentions for it to be banned. The reason for this would be that there would be a lot of people taking about it, therefore helping them to gain more popularity and the likelihood for more people to want to listen to the song would increase. 1980s: MTV Success. More and more videos would get played on MTV and the channel became more popular. Madonna became very popular at this time as he had very high sex appeal so a lot of people were interested in her videos. This time was also know as the "Golden Era". From this timeline it is clear that many artists now rely upon the uptake of music videos. But in honesty, I believe that it is taking away the attention of some of the music and focusing on what the artist looks like of how good of an actor/actress they are. No one really focuses on the music and the lyrics solely anymore. This is why I think that even though music videos are helpful in a sense that they allow the audience to have an interaction with the audience, they aren't really good in terms of allowing the audience to only care about the music itself.

Research: Genre Conventions

Research: Goodwin's Theory.

Goodwin's Theory on music videos is broken down into eight sub categories of what most music videos contain of any genre. 1. Genre Characteristics. Music videos often reflect their genre through the use of specific conventions. For example, a R&B video would tend to include a lot of money or expensive things to show their wealth e.g. cars. 2.Relationship Between Lyrics and Visuals. A connection is shown through the visuals to the lyrics. Either being Illustrative; explaining the lyrics visually, amplifying; exaggerating of the lyrics liking to the video and contradicting; opposite to the lyrics. 3. Relationships between music and visuals. Visuals show a connection to the actual music. If the music is upbeat, then so are the visuals. If the music is monotone, then so are the visuals. 4. Star Motifs. Includes many close-up shots of artists, demanded by the record labels to make them popular and identifiable. 5. Notion of Looking. Particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body- women that are seen as sexual objects. There are a huge amount of music videos that could fit into this section nowadays e.g. Rihanna. 6. Intertextual References. In many videos you will find there are often links to other films, TV programmes or other music videos. This is intertextual referencing. 7. Performance, Narrative or concept based. Performance- Focuses solidly on artist/band. Narrative- There is a storyline to the video. Concept- Using a single concept. Can be obscure or surreal. 8. Technical Elements The micro elements that make up the music video(Cinematography, Editing, Sound, Mise-En-Scene) An example of this would be Omarion's Icebox video. You can tell that it is a RnB video because there is a lot of dancing, and Omarion is wearing a shirt that shows a lot of skin, to show off his arm muscles. The lyrics and music have a relationship with the visuals as the beat is quite slow, and the dance moves and editing matches this. There are a lot of close ups of Omarion and Timbaland showing Star Motifs. In terms of notion of looking, there is an attractive girl in the video, and she is showing off her legs and cleavage which suggests that she is the "sexual object" of the video. This video doesn't use the idea of intertextual references. This video includes Concept, narrative and performance. This is because at the beginning of the video, when it shows the montage and internals of a body, we don't really know whats going on. Also, there is a narrative to the video(a confrontation with a girl) and we do see parts of the video where he is just singing. Another video, such as Antenna by Fuse ODG isn't really narrative or concept based even though there is dancing in there, but its mainly performance based as we always see him singing in the video. All music videos have one or more of all of these elements. The way these elements are used however, is how the audience can tell what kind of genre the music video is. This makes it easy for an audience to decide whether they will want to continue watching as they can instantly,within a few seconds, decide what the genre is.

Introduction to Music Videos.

What is a music video? A music video promotes a song by helping to tell a story of the lyrics and it also gives the audience something to remember. A music video serves many purposes. One of the obvious reasons being to simply sell the artists music by giving visual aids to accompany the song and maybe a less obvious reason would be to influence fans into maybe helping to stand up for any world political problems that the artist may believe in or wants to help change. The impact a music video can have is to attract more loyal fans and get them interested in the artist's other music, and also to sometimes draw and emotional impact based on the narrative of the video. The typical elements of a conventional music video include:- -The artist being present in the music video -The editing and setting reflect the genre of the music Synergy is also present in this industry in forms of:- -Radio -TV -Print -Film Soundtrack Other Elements in a music video can include Performance(lip syncing),Narrative(a storyline in video), Thematic(Follows a theme e.g. Gorrillaz), symbolic(e.g. Madonna)and rhythmic(matches the pace of the song). Also, music videos tend to be visually stylish and contain a mixture of both performance and narrative. Music videos such as Rihanna's 'We Found Love' video received a lot of criticism because it wasnt very conventional. The adult themes that were included in the video-sex, drugs, smoking and violence- made it very controversial. The full version even got banned from TV and YouTube because it was inappropriate for younger viewers. This may have portrayed these sensitive topics as being okay and almost fun throughout this video which is why some people were very negative towards it, while other viewers loved it. Linkin Park's music videos can be very Thematic they all seem to be very 'loud' to watch and there is always a lot going on.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kXYiU_JCYtU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> This particular music video has a narrative and performance. It is about a girl who feels lost in the world, and she has no friends. She suffers through life with issues such as self harm and self loathing. This all matches the lyrics of the song(Numb-Linkin Park) "Every step that I take, I another mistake to you. And every second I waste is more that I can take." This allows fans to empathise with the female in the video and also to relate to her, if they are going through the same problems as she is. As this band are not very mainstream, they have a loyal fanbase so they are not looking to become mainstream. This is why they use quite sensitive themes in their songs and videos because they know a lot of people do suffer in silence with these kinds of things.