Spike Jonze

American Director of music videos and commercials. Is an Academy award nominated director and producer.

He is also a co-producer of famous programme Jackass on MTV.

He has been involved with music vidoes with artists such as Fatboy Slim.

Michel Gondry

French film, commercial and music video director, and an academy award winning screenwriter.

He began creating videos for a french rock band in which he was also a drummer. The style of his videos attracted attention of a music artist called Bjork. He went on to produce 7 music videos for him. He also pioneered the ''bullet time'' technique later adapted in the Matrix.

He has been involved with films such as Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine, Be Kind Rewind and The Science of sleep. Hes also done over 50 music vidoes, many french, but has worked with big people such as The Rolling Stones, Wyclef Jean, Kylie Minogue, Daft Punk and The White Stripes.

9/6/2009

In todays media lesson are learning outcome was to understand the conventions of music videos and to gain knowledge of the history of music vidoes, and also try and analyse a variety of music videos.

5 Key Dates in the history of music videos are:

1962- British television introduces music programmes such as ''Top of the pops''

1981- MTV launched

1984- MTV presents its first music video awards

1995- Release of the most expensive music video over- Scream by Michael and Janet Jackson

2007- Musicbox is launched by Sony BMG, this is an online portal, being the first streaming effort

A music video we looked at was Subterranean Blues- Bob Dylan where the music video is all in one take, and had no narrative and the artist did not feature.

Another one we looked at was Dead end street- The Kinks which was clearly old, as it was in black and white, and had a lot of cut shots but otherwise standard camera angles such as medium shots. However at the end they used a special effect of wiping a character out as if he dissappeared.

A music video that clearly started to explore the creativity in music video is Space Oddissey by David Bowie in which there is use of special effects, change of costume constantly etc.


1)How has music video changed over time?

• More special effects
• Used as a marketing strategy
• More colour
• More money is being spent on them
• More movement
• A story/narrative occurs

2) What is the impact of new technology on music video?

• Internet
• High Definition
• Ipods
• Portable Media Devices

3) What are the conventions?

• Song
• Artist
• Lip-syncing
• Short-not longer then avergae 4 minutes
• Narrative reflects song
• Range of camera angles and shots
• Fast editing

Music Video Conventions

Most Music videos contain:

Music
Vocals
Artist
Cast of characters if a storyline follows the video
Camera Angles
Editing
Mise En Scene

One of the earliest music videos is 'House of the rising sun' by the Animals. This was made in 1964. This near enough set the conventions for a music video, listed above, as it is one of the first.

A music video that i have seen that does not completely follow the conventions is a song called ''Clint Eastwood'' by the Gorillaz for it is a cartoon, with the characters singing the song and the real artists are background singers but not seen in the video.