A2 Media Adam: April 2010

Lights and Sounds -
Feel Alive

Formed in Feb '07
'indie-pop‘
Big stir with their incredible song-writing and emphatic live shows
Pumping piano, acoustic golden pop melodies, lullabic vocals and shimmery instrumentation
Already played and toured with the likes of HelloGoodbye, Melee, One Night Only and Meg & Dia.

Genre
Lights and Sounds are an ‘Indie-Pop’ band and unsigned.

With it being a typical indie band most of there video will include them with there instruments and also as a group all together, performance or performance and narrative music video.

Using the beat style of music because they are not hindered by a record label.

A lot of indie bands like Lights and Sounds started on music websites like MySpace, to be heard.

Pop music , it is more upbeat then other indie bands

Indie starting to happen more within the music industry , music video will normally end but being fresh and different to other music videos. Also other Indie-Pop bands have been seen to you bright colours within the band a video to match the upbeat music. For example Saving Amie another Indie-Pop band having it just them in the video with different colours everywhere.

The audience for typically indie-pop is the trendy ‘Topman’ wannabe’s who want to follow the crowd of people. They are normally seen with Bright colours , and a “fashionable” look. They are following the look of indie-pop band members.

Audience , Genre with the Video

You can see with the clothes that they are wearing that is fashionable. Indie-pop.

Wearing Clothes because of their genre and attract the audience of a young teen indie-kid.

Song is up beat .

Have there instruments on their location with them playing, still having a narrative story at the same time.

Location is cheap in a way , just a plain lake with sand, shows the cheap unsigned banned, not having any funds too afford more. At 2:38 of the video you can see people , so its probably a public lake area, couldn't get it for them self, don't have a record label

Only have 2 actors. Could be aimed also a dads

Camera
Hand Held Camera
The camera’s shots were mainly long timed shots of passive movements tracking across the set. I think that this was used to show some meaning to the song, about time, and time being one movement it doesn't stop. Linking with that the camera never really stops moving.
Close ups of the singer shows the importance, but in most of the close up shots , you can see he is never alone and other band member can be seen. The band is important as well.
Canted shots are used in some of shots , to show a dream like affect of something being unreal. The song lyrics could be seen as someone's conscience telling them to spend the time to love their children?
You have long shots of the Band sometimes centralized to show their importance. Also long shots the capture the narrative side of the video, with the band also being seen.
The video is in slow motion to link with the meaning of time , to slow it down when it is fast , and appreciate the small things like being on a crap beach, but you have each other <3>

History of Music Videos

Music Videos today have had some much planned into, when the different artist have them, from there genre. Each video will go with their genre and also what they want to portray about within it about the song. Most of the sole purpose of music video’s in general today and in the past is for the marketing reason, to get the song out there and promote. With using market research and desk research you can find out what you need to put in the video , what you want to portray, what music channel to put it on and you will find out that if you don’t promote then you music video will not get as well know as if it were. Putting it on a music channel that is very popular with your target audience will help, like a lot of the younger generation will look MTV Hits where as if we was talking about older music videos then VHS 1 Classic. The main subject to talk about with today’s music videos is that effect that the internet has forsaken upon them. In 2005 was when internet took its first and final move that has hit the media. 2005 the release of YouTube what made a crazy craze with the younger generation that used the internet, because it was faster and easier to find what music you wanted to see, it who wants to look at a music channel waiting for what song you want on, when you can just go on the computer and it take a couple of clicks to find (that’s the reason now for why music channels have had to increase the viewing of the top charts more). Also now on YouTube you can watch videos in HD, why would you want to watch it on a TV that might not be the same quality. After the rise of YouTube the music channels died down so they put more music videos on the internet. With having music channels you will normal have sky or some sort of multi channelled boxes, and at my point of view as a couch potatoes I would rather watch something else on the other 899 channels than music that can be seen why multi tasking and the computer. In 2007 MySpace was launched [1] what was used just the same way as YouTube was, but it was more centralized on the music, then any video. So MySpace was the next step up for music videos, it was even easier and faster because not just was it for music but was also a socializing network. So it was very popular just with it being a social network and with it then being used for music it attracted lots of bands to use it and put there videos on it. Also the music channels them self have website because if they didn’t want one they will be at a disadvantage. To recap on things no involving the internet if really just all marketing, like how now-a-days they will use a more famous artist at the start so it will attract more people to it, or how you portray you video , funny, strange, etc. For an example a well none video, “Scream” by Michael and Janet Jackson cost them £7 Million and is still well known because of its strangeness, when it first came out it was very popular. ITunes is another main use of music videos with technology, were people can go onto ITunes and buy a music video, and have it on their playlist, also then be able to put it on their IPod (a must have device). But for someone to want to buy a music video it must have to be good for them to want to get it. Music videos will use certain traits to attract viewers, like half naked women like on, Michael Grays “Weekend” to attract young male audience. The last new technology that I can think of would be mobile phone. Mobile phones have now started being about to access programs or application where they can look at music videos when they want, and as like IPods, mobile phones are a must have in today’s world, a guess would be nearly everyone has one that can play videos.

Going back a bit more into time you will remember, Top of the Pops. TOTP started officially, New Year’s day 1968. It started in a small studio with some very popular bands, like The Rolling Stones. But TOTP only started playing music videos in the later 1970’s. So at this time TOTP’s is quite popular and is now starting to show music videos, to meet its viewers. But with them now showing music videos then BBC (owners of TOTP’S) put a strict limit on what videos that can be playing, meaning when there was a good video that is being used, and used again the next week will create more sales and also more views for TOTP’s for the ratings that week. At this point the well known Music Video from this era was Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody [2]. Queen couldn’t play on TOTP’s at the time, so they decide to create the music video for TOTP’s. It was made via videotape and is all shot and edited on it as well [1]. The video is that popular because of the fact it only took 4 hours to film on a videotape and then was well know from the way to was shot, with the 4 members in a silhouette. Even though people say that it was the first but in fact Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles was the first video, but with TOTP’S being so popular it was more know than The Buggles that was shown on another channel. But in 1981 was when MTV was launched and they aired The Buggle’s song and that was it, the start of the music videos on television, 24 hours a day [1]. At this time it was the main role in the music market. To me I will call the 1980’s of music videos as the Jacko era , because this was Michael Jackson finest year wear one of the most known and viewed music video was set, with Thriller, Thriller being 14 minutes long and with the sickest zombie dance moves to ever be seen. Not only was there thriller but also beat it and another well known video that lit its way onto the TV dancing. So at this point there are so many new music videos coming out and are now competing on music channels on TV, and after the music channels have be established they start to compete against each other with other new channels. MTV started to branch out its channels after more competition was there, so it was in 1985 where they started up VHS 1 what was only meant for older audiences, so they started to branch out so each channel can have its sole target audience. The well not known channels that use the niche markets like heavy metal are not as popular but they are used a lot with their target audiences, a channel like Scuzz, but they also had a competitor Kerrang.

With MTV they use to get sent music videos for free from bands, so they will put it on their channel. MTV were able to make money by not spending lots of money from the artists and getting popular at the same time. But when more music channels started and the artist wondered why they were giving away their music videos for free, MTV and other channels had to start compete with each other and have to buy the music videos , and with there being so many more music channels it was getting harder. MTV have expanded to 30 other channels, this is including their international channels for example, MTV Asia. They needed to do that to get them self more well know and have more artist come to them instead of other competitors and also to get more views all around the world, globalization of MTV. MTV have channels where they will just show entertainment shows, maybe featuring artists, for examples MTV show “Runs House”. Then they would have MTV Hits where they will show most of the chart music videos, or MTV Dance where you will see manly dance music, which target audience. They also will show some other things like interviews with artist on their song, and they get run through it, the down side to that though is the fact that if you was watching it on SKY you did is set to a certain time of the day, you could be busy and miss it, where you could just log on to the computer later on the day and watch it on YouTube. But in a way it is solved from by having SKY+ because you can recorded any program you want and watch it later, whenever you want to (not a lot of people will have SKY+ though).

Going further back there were some black and white featured music videos , but they wasn’t shown more as music videos, but more like Documentaries like with the Beatles, where they had speaking involved and then sometimes music scene. Also The Monkees had their TV show that was well known in the late 1960’s and had film segments that were created to go with some of their songs. The rest of the bands had black and white pictures as a film with the music in the background or have promo films with (later on) colour clips that have been filmed in a studio with sets and have the artists lip-sync.

Censorship started to censor music videos in the 1980’s because of it starting to get popular to show them, so any music video that shows harmful things or inappropriate things. Other than pornographically images, language or violence being censored, racial attitudes, ethnic stereotyping or political correctness would also be censored. But even though some are censored, some other music video will get away with them, but the channels will show them after watershed so then it will be fine. For example “Lap Dance” by N.E.R.D is also shown after 9 because of the nudity shown. Some music videos will get shown but have to take parts out, like Michael Jacksons “Black or White” was censored because in one scene he was inappropriately touching himself [1]. There have been others like t.A.T.u. where they have their very famous kiss, and people protested against it, and even though I failed, every show they got put on when they kissed the camera went to something else so you could see it happen.

Bibliography

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video#Unofficial_music_videos

[2]Classroom Information from teachers

Other websites viewed:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Some-History-Facts-on-Music-Videos&id=85854

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV

http://www.nypress.com/article-16889-official-history-of-music-video.html

http://www.videocure.com/music-videos/m/fcc1850bc73738f7905794db47fc1122.html

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=music+videos+history&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1T4PBEA_en-GBGB302GB302&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=Sp2tSu6IDNPRjAf3_8HkBw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=10

http://www.everything2.com/

http://www.1st-free-music-download.com/music-video.html