Music video
A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. These videos are typically shown on music television and on streaming video sites like YouTube, or more rarely shown theatrically. They can be commercially issued on home video, either as video albums or video singles. The format has been described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip", "film clip", "video clip", or simply "video".
While musical short films were popular as soon as recorded sound was introduced to theatrical film screenings in the 1920s, the music video rose to prominence in the 1980s when American pay-TV channel MTV based its format around the medium.
Music videos use a wide range of styles and contemporary video-making techniques, including animation, live-action, documentary, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Combining these styles and techniques has become more popular due to the variety for the audience. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may not have any concept, being only a filmed version of the song's live concert performance.[1]
Unofficial music videos[edit]
Unofficial, fan-made music videos are typically made by synchronizing existing footage from other sources, such as television series or films, with the song. The first known fan video, or songvid, was created by Kandy Fong in 1975 using still images from Star Trek loaded into a slide carousel and played in conjunction with a song.[108] Fan videos made using videocassette recorders soon followed.[109] With the advent of easy distribution over the internet and cheap video-editing software, fan-created videos began to gain wider notice in the late 1990s.
A well-known example of an unofficial video is one made for Danger Mouse's illegal mashup from his The Grey Album, of the Jay-Z track "Encore" with music sampled from the Beatles' White Album, in which concert footage of the Beatles is remixed with footage of Jay-Z and hip-hop dancers.[110]
In 2004, a Placebo fan from South Africa[111] made a claymation video for the band's song "English Summer Rain" and sent it to the band. They liked the result so much that it was included on their greatest hits DVD.[112]
In 2016, a Flash animation for song "Come Together" by the Beatles was included on The Beatles Blu-ray disc.