Music Video Production Research Articles

Alternative Imaginaries of Cyprus: Space and Narrative Re/construction in Local Music Video Production

The article offers a close reading of music videos created in the Republic of Cyprus during the past two decades, focusing specifically on the ways the audiovisual texts represent space and (re)construct narratives in/of the Greek Cypriot context. Building on existing work in the area of lens-based media studies, namely cinema and photography, the article firstly examines how music videos co-exist and converse with other types of audiovisual representations of the island of Cyprus. Secondly, it presents a classification of local music videos, based on how such creative outputs represent Cyprus as a locale. In doing so, it highlights the ways in which alternative visual treatments might, consciously or otherwise, speak back to and rewrite narratives associated with specific places. The videos are also examined in relation to the lyrical content of the songs and the music genres they belong to. Our work contributes to the expanding body of research on the popular music scape of the island, particularly concentrating on the transgressive dynamic of strands of the Greek Cypriot independent music scene. This is the first study that offers a close examination of local music video production, which we place in the growing scholarly debates about how recent artistic expression in the Republic of Cyprus destabilises dominant representations of space and identity and produces new aesthetics of the Cypriot experience.

Make Me Black Music Video: A Project of DIVAS for Social Justice

The Make Me Black Music Video is a collaborative project created in 2022 by students of the STEAM for Social Change program to honor Black History Month. The initial idea for the music video was inspired when one of the STEAM for Social Change facilitators first heard the song while listening to a local Minnesota radio station, Purple Current. Also available as an internet stream, the Purple Current radio station focuses on Black music that honors the legacy of the late musician Prince Rogers Nelson. As the facilitator listened to the song Make Me Black, originally performed by Minnesotan Ashley Dubose, they saw it as a medium for teaching students the importance of seeing themselves as beautiful and joyful, while instilling pride in where they come from. Before creating their music video, students engaged in an 8-week session where they learned the history of MTV, including how the channel failed to play any artists of color until Michael Jackson’s Thriller became a global phenomenon in 1983. Students also analyzed the song lyrics, created storyboards using Polaroid cameras, and learned about the fundamentals of music video production. The original music was produced by Rich Lee and performed by Ashley DuBose. The students’ music video was filmed on location at their school sites and the DIVAS for Social Justice makerspace. It also features the artwork of educator and artist, Adam Johnson.

The (R)evolution of Music Video in American Music Industry

The essay offers a concise historical examination of the evolution of music videos and places this medium within the broader context of the popular music industry, which is influenced by the principles of late capitalism. The study highlights the significance of music videos in the popular music industry and media studies, underscoring their role as both promotional and artistic products. It traces the medium's development, from its early days as "illustrated songs" in the late 19th century to the MTV era's explosion, marked by groundbreaking music video directors and the digital turn in the 21st century, which has reshaped the landscape of music video production, distribution, and reception. The article also addresses emerging trends, such as visual albums and changes in video length and format, reflecting shifts in music consumption and technology. In conclusion, it asserts that music videos continue to evolve, challenging conventions and fostering a multisensory, intermedial relationship with audiences.

Process for 3D modeling and rendering optimization for low-cost music video production

Process for 3D modeling and rendering optimization for low-cost music video production

Mzansi Magic

Mzansi Magic

The liberatory potentials of multimodality: Collaborative Reggaeton music video production in Habana, Cuba

This study took place in Habana, Cuba over approximately 1 year, wherein the researcher collaborated with Reggaeton artists. While scholarship in multimodality has explored its potentials for literacy pedagogy, developing new literacies, and expanding identity possibilities, less research has focused on the creation of the spaces, tools, and resources required for composing multimodal products and on the liberatory dimensions of multimodality. This study highlights the backstories of these production processes, including the innovative use(s) of spaces and tools, the resources leveraged in order to construct and distribute multimodal media, and the ways artists made meaning together. The findings elucidate the ways the artists leveraged their ingenuity, collaboratively developed digital literacy practices, and produced multimodal texts to create new possibilities.

Interview

Kris P. (formerly Puszkiewicz) Taylor moved to New York from London in 1980. She was working at Island Records in the Publicity and Artist Development department when MTV was launched in 1981. The department quickly expanded to include Music Videos and she was soon promoted to Director of Music Video Promotion and Production. She left in 1985 to work as Executive Producer at Zbig Vision in New York after commissioning Zbigniew Rybczyński’s first music video, the MTV-award-winning Close to the Edit (1985) by Art of Noise. After successfully working together on fourteen videos over two years Kris moved briefly to work at MCA Records in Los Angeles and then in 1988 became Director of Music Video Production at Columbia Records (West Coast), working with artists such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Michael Bolton, The Bangles, Alice In Chains, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana and Mariah Carey. In all she commissioned or was involved in the production of over three hundred music videos.

Music video and commercials production in the UK screen industries

This report evaluates the significance of the AHRC-funded “Fifty Years of British Music Video” research project and its written and digital outputs on existing knowledge of the UK screen industries. It notes that heretofore music video, like advertising, has been a neglected domain of research commissioned by the British Film Institute and of work archived by the BFI’s National Film Archive. It has also been overlooked in reports commissioned by the Government into the UK’s creative industries. Yet the project’s research findings, taken in collaboration with other past and present research on British film and television, suggest that the sector has played a crucial role in talent development and innovation. The report urges the need for further research in this area.

A NEW TRADITION

The opening article in this issue addresses the emergence of music video production in Papua New Guinea over the last five years and its relation to notions of both national and cultural independence and the representation of tradition.

MUSIC VIDEO, MARKETING AND MISADVENTURE

The polarisation of views on the 'functional' as opposed to 'cultural' nature of music video has tended to block attempts to analyse the form between these polarities. This study attempts to redress this by analysing the manner in which music video production has been used to promote the product and product image of the Australian band the Hummingbirds. This production history serves to illustrate the manner in which the production of promotional video material is often far less 'slick' and calculated than may be assumed. As the following study demonstrates, the enterprise is often speculative, haphazard, contentious or misguided.

SPECTACULAR SIGNIFICATION - NOISEWORKS' FREEDOM VIDEO

Industrial Light and Magic', a study of the development of visual style in music videos (Hayward, 1990), identified a number of continuing strands of music video production. One of these was a series of videos, particularly prominent since the mid 1980s, which have attempted to grab viewer attention by the use of ever more surprising and spectacular visual effects - a cycle devoted to the pursuit of 'impact aesthetics'.In one sense however, the history of visual effects outlined in 'Industrial Light and Magic' mirrored its object of study and became dazzled by the sheen of the images it analysed.The arguments advanced there avoided examining the extent to which the images discussed continued to signify in more conventional ways. Images do not, after all, become completely drained of denotative and iconographic significance merely by being combined in decorative - albeit dazzling - montage. The signifying force of such images may be overwhelmed, subdued, or even dazzled, but a residual effect remains. This article will attempt to explore aspects of this contention with regard to a specific music video text; one which - unlike those exclusively Anglo-American ones discussed in the original analysis - was produced in Australia, Noiseworks' Freedom, directed by Warren Lynch in 1990.

Independent Production and Industrial Tactics in Britain: Michael Klinger and Baby Love

Independent Production and Industrial Tactics in Britain: Michael Klinger and Baby Love

‘Kick, Bollocks and Scramble’: An Examination of Power and Creative Decision-Making in the Production Process During the Golden Era of British Music Videos 1995–2001

In the golden era of British music video production 1995 – 2001 the responsibilities of a feature film producer were shared by the producer, executive producer, director and video commissioner. The author examines the roles of each, and argues that Pardo’s framework (2010 for evaluating the creative contribution of producers obscures the direct budgetary power of producers in this particular sector. She argues that more empirical research should be conducted on the role of the producer in sectors of the British screen industry other than feature films and television.

Las compañías fonográficas como anunciantes en la producción de videoclips

Partiendo de una concepción del videoclip como herramienta de comunicación comercial específica del sector fonográfico, este trabajo aborda el rol de anunciante que las compañías fonográficas desempeñan a lo largo del proceso de producción de videoclips. Se analiza, pues, el proceso de producción del videoclip poniendo el acento en su función y su subordinación al sector fonográfico, y se presta atención a las semejanzas y diferencias existentes con respecto al proceso desarrollado en el ámbito de la publicidad convencional.

Constructing community in the digital home studio: Carnival, creativity and indigenous music video production in the Bolivian Andes

AbstractThis paper examines issues surrounding the production of a Carnival music video VCD in the home studio of the Bolivian indigenous(originario)musician and cultural activist Gregorio Mamani. On the one hand, continuities with rural productive practices suggest a model for the ‘home studio’ more resembling a ‘cottage industry’ than the kind of ‘isolated’ activity separate from family life that Paul Théberge has described for the case of North America (1997). On the other hand, the urban isolation, entrepreneurial motivations, and concern with promoting the individual that characterise Gregorio Mamani's home studio suggest the very antithesis of indigenous community values. Notwithstanding difficult relations with his community of origin and his use of technological artifice to construct (or even ‘fake’) an audiovisual impression of thecommunitasof Carnival, Mamani presents this work as a means to ‘strengthen culture’. Despite these contradictions, this low budget production – targeted at rural peasants and urban migrants – is shown to engage deeply with indigenous concepts of creativity and oral tradition, as well as potentially contributing to the construction of broader circuits of culture and ‘imagined communities’. Mamani's individualistic, yet influential, approach and his insistence that only one or two individuals are the composers in an indigenous community, challenges us to question the relationship between creativity and community.

New Directions in Music Video: Vincent Moon and the ‘ascetic aesthetic’

This article takes the form of a case study on the work of French filmmaker and music video director Vincent Moon, and his ‘Takeaway Shows’ at the video podcast site La Blogothèque. This discussion examines the state, and status, of music video as a dynamic mode of convergent screen media today. It is argued that the recent shift of music video online represents a revival of music video—its form and aesthetics— together with a rejuvenation of music video scholarship. The emergence of the ‘ascetic aesthetic’ is offered as a new paradigm for music video far removed from that of the postmodern MTV model. In this context, new music video production intersects with notions of immediacy, authenticity and globalised film practice. Here, convergent music video is enabled by the network of Web 2.0 and facilitated by the trend towards amateur content, participatory media and Creative Commons licensing. The pedagogical implications of teaching new music video within screen media arts curricula is highlighted as a trajectory of this research.

Pirates of the Mediterranean : Moroccan music video and technology

Technologies for the consumption and production of global media have brought ‘foreign bodies’ into the domestic spaces of millions of Moroccans. Such unprecedented access to cultural materials is, however, negotiated at a local and familial level, and this paper considers the workings of this domestic interface. It examines the economy of music video production in Morocco and the close links existing between new technologies, traders and their markets. The paper also shows how moving images can be ‘ripped’ from global sources and re-edited to fit indigenous musical structures.

Local interpretation

Following its inception as a promotional form in the early-mid 1970s, music video has become an internationally produced and circulated form that is part of a multi-facetted audio-visual media environment alongside related forms such TV advertisements, corporate promo features, television programs, feature films, video games and internet media. While it overlaps with other forms, it also comprises a distinct media area with its own genealogies, genres, fashions and (most appropriately for the focus of this article) local inflections of these. While the majority of analyses of music video production sectors, styles and/or auteurs have focused on North American and/or Western European production; analysis of other industrial contexts provides significant insights into local engagements with the form and of its realisation within particular commercial, stylistic and technological spaces. Study of the development of music video in Melanesia is particularly illuminating since it reveals diverse and differential patterns of development at one of the furthest removes from the centre of the Western music industry and its product dispersion apparatus.

“Drop It Like It's Hot”

Abstract This paper describes results from a qualitative study of the music video production industry and the creative process in rap music video production and artist marketing. Participant responses are presented in three areas: the music video production process, recent trends in rap music videos, and the music video set as a site of gender exploitation. Findings suggest a concern over artistic freedom of expression and the mechanical production of the “booty video” formula that saturates music video programming and is a template for rap videos. Participants agreed that there is something lackluster about rap music played on radio and aired on music video programming. Additionally, gendered hierarchies on video sets create divisions among women working in various positions, and discourage women from supporting one another, which, from a black feminist perspective, does not accommodate an ethic of care and personal responsibility.

“Drop It like It's Hot”: Culture Industry Laborers and Their Perspectives on Rap Music Video Production

“Drop It like It's Hot”: Culture Industry Laborers and Their Perspectives on Rap Music Video Production