Music videos are everywhere we turn on the TV, the internet; social networking sites, even your friends are talking about newest video releases. A music video is a short film or video which lasts approximately 3 minutes, and it usually accompanies a song. Music videos were originally designed to promote the sale of music recordings. They did not start to become popular until the early 80’s. 1981-1991; music videos go mainstream.
MTV launched ‘video killed the radio star’ which played 24 hour music. By the mid 80’s it grew to play a popular music. Some important artists of this time were Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna. In 1983 Michael Jackson released an influential and successful music video for the song Thriller. The video lasted nearly 14 minutes long and it cost roughly $500,000 to film. Also in 1995, another video of this, Scream was released and it cost a shocking $7,000,000 to produce and is the most expensivest video of all time. Madonna’s ‘Bedtime Story’ cost $5 million and is the second expensivest music video.
With the arrival of high quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the new wave era, enabling many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, compared to the relatively high costs of using film.
Music videos are created for many purposes, the main purpose is to promote the artist. By creating a video to go with a song will make more viewers interested as they want to watch the video and then after a couple of times hearing the song they might decide they like the music and then go on to buy the album or download it, this then resulting to a rise in sale figures. Also by watching videos, you become familiar with the appearance of the band or artist. There are many different camera techniques used in videos. They use different angled shots, some being close up as this give face recognition and wide shots as you get to see the whole scene