Music Video Research

In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts featured many bands, vocalists and dancers.


The shorts were typically about six minutes in duration, and featured art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing the song.


Another early form of music video was one-song films called Promotion Clips in the 1940s. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing.


One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo film made by The Animals in 1964. This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio and it features the group in a lip-synched performance with an edited sequence of tracking shots, close-ups and long shots.


In 1981, the US video channel MTV launched, airing ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet the music video would by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing.




Mini Analysis:
Michael Jackson – Thriller:
The song belongs to the genre of pop music from the 1980s. The lyrics do illustrate and amplify the video. Since ‘thriller’ relates to horror, and the music video is based around zombies. In a way it does contradict lyrics because the video uses dancing zombies. The music fits well with the dancing of the characters. The performers are shown to be scary, bit lively. The female actress is shown to be innocent. The video doesn’t contain sexual views of women. This video changed the music video scene forever and was completely different from what anyone had ever seen before.


Deadmau5 ft. Rob Swire – Ghosts And Stuff:
The song belongs to the genre of trance music. The lyrics slightly contradict the video, as there is only a few lines that match the video. One of them is ‘out of my body’ which is where the ghost comes from. The title of the song also matches the video. The music and video work well because it keeps the viewer entertained by the ghosts actions. The video doesn’t contain sexual views of women or men.