With the increase in the amount of music videos, record labels and artists are increasingly actively looking for new ways to showcase their material. Television has become a great output for these music videos, with many different channels showing purely music videos 24 hours a day. The huge variety in the genres of music that these channels specify in, there are endless opportunities for these artists to get their material shown. I now need to decide which, out of the many different music channels, my music video would be most suited to. Some of the main music channels that I will be analysing are MTV, Viva and Kerrang.
MTV
The original MTV channel now features a lot less on music videos and more on reality television programmes.
Some of the programmes that MTV have incorporated into their main channel include:
- Jersey Shore
- 16 and Pregnant
- Made
- Fresh Prince of Bel Air
All are used to help the brand gain access to a wider audience, reeling in people that are not interested in watching only music videos on the channel 24/7.
There are however many different music channels under the MTV brand, including MTV Music, MTV Base, MTV Hits, MTV Dance, MTV Rocks and MTV Classic. These six channels run by MTV therefore diversify the variety of genres of music available for people to watch, again, helping them gain a wider audience, and also offers me many options within the original 'MTV' branded music channels for my music video to be showcased on.
Viva
Viva is a music video and entertainment channel that replaced 'The Music Factory' in 2009. The channel is owned by Viacom International Media Networks Europe and was originally a German entertainment channel. Viva also became the first entertainment channel from MTV to be featured on freeview, helping the brand to accomodate viewers who may not have access to a subscription based television network such as Sky or Virgin Media.
Similarly to all other MTV channels, Viva shows reality and entertainment television programmes alongside music videos and chart shows. When it comes to the music videos the channel shows, you are more likely to see top 40 music or music from the pop genre, meaning that the song I am creating a music video may not fit so well with the rest being shown.
Kerrang
Kerrang! TV is a music channel that features only music videos from artists that fit into the hard rock/punk/heavy metal genres of music. The channel is owned by Box Television and is loosely related to the well known magazine Kerrang!
Unlike most music channels, Kerrang is openly scheduled and only plays songs from its playlist that are requested by text by viewers. This is similar to channels such as Channel AKA and Starz TV which feature music from the underground grime/rap scene. Seeing as the song I have chosen to create my music video for doesn't really fit into the genres shown on Kerrang! TV, I feel that a channel like this would not be suited for showing my video on.
Overview
Based on these music channels that i have given a brief overview on I feel that the type of channel that would be most suited to showing my music video on would be one like MTV Dance, MTV Bass or another such as Dance Nation TV.
One of the music videos that I found that links very closely to the idea I had for my music video is for a dance song by Dutch trance music and progressive house DJ Sander van Doorn called 'Chasin'. In the video below you can see the main aspects of the video that I think would go will with my music video. The editing is done in a way that fully represents the music, especially through the use of quick cuts to the beat of the music, different camera angles and the use of special effects such as the cctv type camera overlay. These aspects can easily be transferred into our music video, giving us the effects that we need to make our video fit in with others connected to the dance/electronic genre of music.
Another video that I found that has a lot of features that could be incorporated well into my video is for the song 'Sandstorm' by Darude. Although this is not as totally similar to other videos within this genre of music, mainly due to the longer cuts, it still offers many different aspects that would enhance our video. One of these is that way that the camera is not stationary filming the actors running past, it moves with them. The camera is kept smooth through the use of a glidecam and gives the effect that the camera is floating through the air, without the shaking of the camera brought about by someone running.
The music video for 'Invaders Must Die' by The Prodigy also uses very different techniques, including the use of fade to black transitions. The fact that the whole video is in black and white with only small snippets of colour being featured is also another key feature that we could take into consideration, maybe changing it so that we have snippets of black and white in our video. Even though the video is entirely narrative based, with no signs of any instruments being played or artists singing, there is still a small clip of the artists featuring as part of the actors in the the video. This is an idea that I think could possibly be a good thing to include in my video as it can be seen as a way of the artist promoting themselves within a video where they are not necessarily expected to be seen.
One final video that has influenced the way that I intend to create my music video is for the song 'Graduation' by Gemini. All throughout the video there are focus pulls and soft focuses that give a great effect, one that would help my video look a lot more professional. These different focuses are mainly of the artist when he is singing, but there are also some of the environment around such as in the forest and of the clock. This shows that the effect could work with most things we would choose to try it with. There is also a lot of filming of the environment within the video, showing that you do not only need the video to be constantly relating to the music. This could be connected and justify our idea to create a timelapse of the London skyline during a section of the song we have chosen.
UK Tribes
From the website, and other information and knowledge I have gathered, I can conclude that the people who would be watching the music video I am going to create would fit into the clubber/raver social group. Recently, the clubbers/ravers group have moved more into the mainstream with the increasing amounts of dance and electronic musicfrom artists such as Madeon himself and groups such as Swedish House Mafia, Nero and Chase and Status making its way into the charts. Instead of being a small group it has now become one of the major sub cultures of the youth of the United Kingdom.
According to the UK Tribes website, people linked with the clubbers/ravers group tend to be very into the music that they are listening to, and dress and keep up to date with the latest trends from brands such as River Island, Topman and Urban Outfitters. They also like to go to some of the top clubs in the world in places such as Ibiza, London, Magaluf etc including Cream, God's Kitchen and Amnesia. As I highlighted in my post on music channels, people in the clubbers/ravers group would listen to radio stations such as Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra, and watch music channels such as MTV Dance and Clubland TV.