Definition
A music video is a short film that uses the song as the soundtrack and accompanies the release of the song commercially. They are used as a source of entertainment and promotion of the song. Artists may sometimes use their music videos as political statements, such as The Black Eyed Peas - BIG LOVE.
Background
MTV
MTV was first aired in August of 1981. MTV played a vital role in the rise in popularity of music videos. Before MTV, there were no TV channels dedicated to music. The creation of MTV gave artists and labels a chance to get more recognition and publicity, and gave the artist a chance to express themselves even more. One of the most recognisable music videos from the earlier 80s is Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Technology and the rise of the internet changed the way music videos are consumed. They are now mainly watched through YouTube and Vevo. Vevo was foundd in 2009 by three major record labels to try and stop pirated uploads being viewed, and so that they could make more money off of the music videos on the internet.
Techniques and Conventions
Cutting to the beat
Cutting to the beat is when the music video is in sync with the song. For example, if there is a sudden beat drop, there will be something in the music video to point that out. This is a very popular technique which is used in many videos.
Lip Sync
Lip Syncinc is when the artist/band, or an actor/actors will sing along to the song in the video. This may happen constantly throughout or only in certain parts of the video. They may sing to the camera using direct address. When this is being done, it is important to consider which lyrics are being sang along to, and if they are of any signifcance.
Chroma Key
Chroma Keying is the use of green screen. Music videos make use of green screen to create a surreal, fake world.
Camera angles and movement
Camera angles and movement is the use of technical codes to create meaning in the music video This includes closeups, direct address and tracking shots.
Special Effects
Special Effects are practical effects which are applied on set. Makeup and camera work are examples of special effects.
Stylistic Codes
Animation
Use of visual effects, 3D motion graphics, stop motion, hand drawn and vector art.
Narrative
Video is story driven.
Illustrative
There is a clear link between lyrics and visuals.
Surrealist
An irrational reality fantasy, often very bizzare.
Pastiche
Homage or respect is paid to an artist, event, film or TV Show. In this video, Labrinth pays homage to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Parody
A parody is a spoof. This blink-182 video is a spoof of other boyband videos at the time.
Referencing/allusion
A topic in popular culture is referenced or alluded to. This music video references Eminem and Jucie WRLD's albums, which both had big impact on the music culture in their genre. 1:50) It also has references to the Godzilla films, and a reference to Mike Tyson.
Commercial
Designed to make/increase revenue, usually has product placements. The product placement in this music video is at 1:06.
Interprative
The audience must interpret what the video means, visuals and narrative not always related to the song.
Record Labels
Major
Major record labels such as Young Money and Cash Money have a much higher budget, and videos produced under these labels have a much higher expectation of commercial success. The artist will have access to resources and finances, but have less creative freedom.
Indie
Independent labels have a smaller budget, and therefore use less mainstream techniques such as controversy to raise their profile. The artist will have more creative freedom, but still have a boss.
Self Produced
Self Produced videos have small budgets, but the artists have complete creative control. They use new cheaper talents and have no support in terms of resources or finances.
Revenue Sources
Product Placement
Product placement is where a company pays for their product to appear in the music video for a certain amount of time. For example, in this music video, a Playstation 5 is featured.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship is where the artist is paid a certain amount of money to show the companies logo at the start or during the video. Unlike a product placement, a sponsorship does not have to physically be in the video or have any relevance to the location or what is going on. 35 seconds into this video, the Shazam logo pops up in the bottom left corner. This is an example of a sponsorship in a music video.
Youtube Ad Revenue
YouTube makes money by displaying adverts at the start of videos on their website. The uploader of this video also gets a portion of the money from the advert. This music video has almost 5 billion views, so will have generated a lot of money in YouTube ad revenue.
Crowdfunding
Smaller artists, groups or bands may not have the budget to create music videos. In this case, they may ask their fans to contribute to the cost of creating the video.
Bad Blood Analysis
The song Bad Blood was on Taylor Swift's 2014 album "1989". The song didn't originally have verses from Kendrick Lamar, and was just a Taylor Swift song.
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The music video broke the record for the most viewed video in the first 24 hours, with over 20 million views. It now has close to 1.4 billion views on YouTube. The music video also got awards such as MTV Music video of the year. The video was relatively well received by the audience too, with 7.5 million likes, although it also did have a large number of dislikes. The 550 thousand dislikes are most probably from Katy Perry fans, as they felt that the video was an attack on Katy Perry.
Animation/Special Effects/Green Screen: The use of these features created a film like music video, which had a high production values. This can only be achieved by a major label. At this time, Taylor Swift was signed to Big Machine Records, which is owned by UMG (Universal Music Group.) The video is film like and is clearly based on films from the action and sci-fi genres. The video is high concept and has slick editing. A video being high concept means that although the plot may not be the most interesting and is usually very simple, the video is designed to look very impressive.
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Narrative: The story to this music video is very clear and easy to follow, Taylor Swift uses lots of celebrity cameos such as Gigi Hadid and Zendaya to show people that she has a lot of celebrities on her side. In the music video, it is shown as her raising an army to defeat her opponent, each new cameo is given a superhero like name such as frostbyte and knockout.
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Pastiche: This music video takes inspiration from Charlie's Angels, in the fact that it is showing a group of females defeating other people and being powerful. This video is also a homeage to the action genre, as it includes many things which are common in that genre such as large explosions and over the top fight scenes.
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The music video uses a technique called action on the beat. Action on the beat is where an action in the video happens at the same time as the beat, or in rhythm with the beat.
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The music video and song reference a feud between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. Katy Perry had three backup dancers on her tour, and Katy Perry offered them jobs and they accepted the offer. Tatylor Swift accused Katy Perry of stealing her dancers. When the song was first released, many people had an idea that it was about Katy Perry. When the video came out, this proved that the theories and rumours were correct. Selena Gomez plays Taylor Swift's nemesis, who looks comparable to Katy Perry.
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Taylor Swift also makes use of a technique called Direct Address. She mimes and lip syncs specific words. In this context. we can assume she is using the direct address to talk directly to Katy Perry.
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The music video is extremely commercial and has obviously been made to make money out of the Katy Perry situation. One way it has achieved its success is having huge celebrity cameos, with famous female models, actors and singers appearing in the video. The people in the video have a huge range in age and profession, this makes the video appeal to as many fanbases and demographics as possible. For example, Zendaya is very popular amongst the younger generation, whereas Mariska Hargitay is popular for being on Law and Order, which is more popular among older people.
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For the version of the song in the music video, Kendrick Lamar has verses throughout with Talor Swift mainly being on the chorus until the end. Kendrick Lamar is one of the biggest hip-hop artists in the world, and is widely regarded as being one of the best. Kendrick Lamar had just released his album "To Pimp A Butterfly" in March of the same year, this album sold 324,000 copies in the first week in the United States alone. This means that his name would've had a lot of hype and interest around it at that time. Kendrick being in this music video bought a lot of hip-hop fans to Taylor Swift's music, which is unusual as she is a completely different genre.
ATM Analysis
The song ATM is the fifth song on J. Cole's 2018 album, KOD. This album sold 400,000 copies in the United States in the first week alone. The album was released on the 20th of April 2018, with the music video for ATM coming out on the same day. As of November 2020, the music video has almost 75 million views on YouTube.
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The music video was very well received, with 911 thousand likes and only 50 thousand dislikes. This may not seem like an amazing like to dislike ratio, but considering that at the time there was a trend going around started by rapper Lil Pump to hate on J Cole, the ratio is actually great.
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Animation/Special Effects/Green Screen: This video makes heavy use of green screen, especially in the first thirty seconds. The green screen was used to create purple clouds, this makes the viewer know that it is set in a fantasy world as soon as the video starts. It shows children sitting on pill bottles chasing a dollar bill, this is J Cole showing that drugs lead to bad things in life, as they never actually catch up to the dollar bill and the king who has it. To use features such as animation, special effects and green screen, there needs to be a very high production value. J Cole is signed to his own record label Dreamville. Dreamville is distributed by Interscope, which is a division of Universal Music Group. Universal is one of, if not the biggest, record labels and all round media companies ever. They have artists such as 2 Chainz, 50 cent, The 1975, Taylor Swift, Eminem, Lil Wayne and more. (See a full list here.) The video also uses special effects to make the car dealer (also played by J Cole) look a lot fatter than J Cole actually is. This was most likely done with a fat suit.
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Narrative: The video follows a very loose story. It first shows children following the leader who has a lot of money and is on drugs. They follow him by riding through the sky on pill boxes. It then zooms out to show a room floating in the sky, with two people who are obsessed with money. The children then break into this room and steal all the money, apart from one bag. To try and get their money back, the two people go to the casino with their last bag of money and lose it all. They go to buy a used car so that they can drive away and get more money, but it costs too much and they have no money left. One of the people pulls their arm off just to pay for it. They they drive their new flying car into the sky to join the children in the chase for the money. The car can't handle it, and crashes down to the ground. The end of the video has the message "choose wisely." The message of this video is telling people that chasing material objects and drugs will never end well, and you should never make those things your main goals in life.
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One unique thing about this music video is that there are many characters all played by J, Cole, The use of this effect means that people get to see a lot more of the star they want to watch the video for.
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This song does not have any collaborations, as one of J. Cole's main talking points is how he never has other people on his songs. Earlier in the album, J. Cole says:
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Not having any features has not harmed J. Cole's career, as his 2014 album "2014 Forest Hill Drive" and his 2017 album "4 Your Eyez Only" both went double platinum with no features. KOD (The album which ATM appears on) also went platinum the same year it was released.
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Everyday Analysis
The song Everyday is from Logic's 2018 mixtape, "Bobby Tarantino II". and features the world famous DJ Marshmello. The music video, released a month after the release of the mixtape, in April 2018. it currently has 57 million views on YouTube. The Bobby Tarantino II Mixtape sold 119,000 copies first week in the United States, and was his sixth and final mixtape, as he retired from making music in 2020 to focus on his family.
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The music video was extremely well received by viewers, with only 31 thousand dislikes compared to 1.1 million likes.
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The music video is extremely story and plot driven. The start of the video shows a montage of Logic's character doing everyday work things, such as getting coffee and signing papers. This may show how monotonous and repetitive work can be.
The video portrays Logic as an office worker who has spent a lot of time working, including overtime and staying late. This effort does not pay off, as his bosses are still extremely negative towards him and only ever demand more. When he is driving to work, he sees the difference between his car and his bosses car, and feels that it is unfair. One day, he has had enough and snaps. The character storms out of the office with a few other interested workers, as well as a telephone. The group go to a field and smash the telephone, this represents them destroying their past life and not caring about their jobs, and shows them moving on to newer and better things. It turns out that he was actually just daydreaming in the office, and he gets shouted at by his boss again. He is inspired by his dream and stands up to his boss by shouting at them and graffitiing their parking reservation sign after unsuccessfully trying to steal their flashy car. The video also shows that Logic is on very good terms with the other workers in the office, but just not the bosses.
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The music video uses action on the beat. One example of this is when the pile of work is dropped on his desk just as the beat drops. This is done to give importance to the pile of work.
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The video also uses cut on the beat. An example of when it uses this is
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The video uses montages multiple times. The first montage is to show the monotony and repetitiveness of an office job. The second montage shows time passing quickly, but he is still doing the exact same things regardless of what time of the year it is when the beat is about to drop, and all of a sudden there is a cut to Logic having gray hair, and the music stops.
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The video uses repetitive shots, such as the bosses putting work on Logic's desk, to again show the monotony of a nine to five office job, and how boring and demanding it can be.
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One reason why this music video is unique is that halfway through the song, the song stops and another one starts playing. This keeps it varied for people who have already heard the song before, and gives people a reason to continue watching.
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The music video uses special effects to make Logic look much older than he does by giving him wrinkles and gray hair. This creates the illusion that he is much older than he actually is.
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The video is a collaboration between Logic and Marshmello. Marshmello is a hugely popular EDM (Electronic Dance Music) DJ and song producer. The collaboration between a rap artist and an EDM artist means that they have a large demographic and more people will watch the video.
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