RICHMIX

As we are making music videos for our coursework, we went to a music video talk at Rich Mix in brick lane called From MTV to YouTube. The day was split into two with the first session including a talk by Pete Fraser who spoke about the history of music videos, codes and conventions as well as top tips for us when making our music videos. The afternoon session was a talk with Producer Liz Kessler who told us about working in the industry and all about producing videos. There was also a Q&A with music video director, Corin Hardy, who told us his experience in the industry.


Pete Fraser first spoke about the history of music videos. He began with 'What is a music video?' and explained to us that they tell a story and are ways of promoting the artist and their song.
He spoke about how music videos began long before MTV was created. He showed us a video from the 1930s which is a piece of music that an artist has put against different paintings and would follow the rhythm of the music, these "music videos" would generally include text that would advertise products.
He then spoke about the 1940s and 'Soundies'
Soundies were like jukeboxes that included black and white picture videos with music, he showed us a Nat King Cole example. However, these videos were soon banned for containing too much sexual images that were considered inappropriate at the time.
He then explained how the music video developed in the 60s with colour film. In France, Scriptones came about which were the coloured, better quality version of Soundies. The music videos shown in the scriptones included many of the characteristics that we would find in today's music videos.




Also in the 1960s, before proper music videos, artists such as Elvis and The Beatles would have done promo films in which would include songs of the artist and a montage to go with it. As an example he showed us a Beatles example for Money Can't Buy Me Love from the film A Hard Days Night.



In the 70s it became more popular to accompany a song with a music video in order to entertain viewers in live shows when the artists weren't able to perform. The example Pete Fraser gave us was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Finally MTV came about in 1981, the channel began showing mostly British acts. Soon enough it became almost an unwritten rule in order to obtain a chart hit you must have an accompanying music video. The videos on this new channel ranged from low to high budget, bands like Madness would have conventionally low budgeted videos such as the 'Our House' video whereas bands sucha as Duran Duran would spend much more on their videos. When the American artists began to spread on the channel, budgets began rising.
MTV would be dominantly male singers until Madonna became popular and brought the women to the channel.
The black market for music was rarely shown on TV until the likes of Michael Jackson with the music video to Thriller became a massive hit and changed the music television industry for life.
From then on, black artists have begun to dominate music industry with there even now being whole music channels dedicated to showing typically music of black origin including rap, hip hop and R&B music.


Videos including  50 Cent's Candy Shop show the typical conventions of a rap artist's music video with the flash cars and clothes, a big mansion and the representation of woman in minimal clothing performing and dancing in a heavily sexual way. 

However, not all black music artists follow these typical conventions of a hip hop video, Jay Z teamed up with director Mark Romamek to produce a music video to his rap song "99 Problems" that looked more like a rock music video. Boundaries are pushed greatly in music videos these days and there are so many of them that all differ in many ways.


Pete Fraser then went on to talk about developments in technology over the years and spoke mostly about YouTube and how easy it is now to view music videos and to create your own video on any budget at all. He spoke about trends and how people can make fun of or play around with in order to make their own version of a music video that already exists.




Lastly, he gave us lots of tips to use when making our music videos.

• limber up - practice with all your equipment. Learn to lip sync well etc.
• Choose an appropriate track and keep it short.
• create a pitch for your music video and get feedback on your ideas
• have a clear concept
• PLAN EVERYTHING
• keep every idea and new thing on a blog
• shoot more than necessary
• prepare to write an analysis of your music video using Goodwin's Analysis as well as variant theories.

At the end of this session we were all played a song. We were told to go off at lunch in our groups and come up with a basic idea for a music video for that song. It was a song none of us had heard before, nor were we familiar with the video which was good in order to let us start from scratch. At the beginning of the second section we each pitched our ideas to Liz and Corin in order to get the opinion of a producer and a director in terms of the idea itself but also budgeting and so on.

The trip was very useful as it helped us get an understanding of video making in the real world. I also really enjoyed finding out about the history of something that is so popular in today' s society.