Analysis of Modern Media

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A music video is produced to go to a song as a short promotional film to sell music. They rely on rhythm, pace and lyrical imagery for effect and all together are used for advertising, entertainment and artistic purposes. Music videos have two types, conceptual and performance. Conceptual music videos are based on a central theme, they often have a plot and tell a story but sometimes can be just jumbled images that match the music. This type of music video can be broken into two narratives; simple narrative (a basic situation for fantasy but laps into jumbled imagery in between) and complex narrative (demonstrative genre divisions of their full length counterparts). There are also non-narrative music videos that a dream like effect is created as the images and music is combined for emotional effect. Performance clips concentrate on the actual stage performance of the musicians. They are aimed at ages 14-34 and audiences with disposable income. When a music video is produced major labels benefit from the exposure provided from major music companies such as MTV where as small independent labels suffer in silence. The music videos that have been compared are "Thriller" by Michael Jackson and "Gangnam" by Korean pop artist Psy.

August 1, 1981 was the day that the way the world viewed music videos was changed forever. With the launch of music marketing giant, MTV, consumers were able to enjoy music videos at the comfort in their own home. MTV went on to revolutionize the music industry and become an influential source of pop culture and entertainment in the United States and other parts of the world, including Europe, Asia and Latin America, which all have MTV-branded channels (A + E Networks, 2009).

Michael Jacksons “Thriller” is a thirteen-minute music video, directed by John Landis, that was released December 2, 1983. Since it’s release, the short film has been voted most influential pop music video of all time. It proved to have a profound effect on pop culture for it’s unprecedented merging of film and music. It earned a record-breaking number of Grammy awards, sold in record numbers, resulted in music videos that changed promotional possibilities, broke down racial barriers and left a legacy of influence that continues to this day (Morrison, 2016). Thriller was recorded with a production budget of $750 000 and was the cause of the commercial market for videos. Thriller sealed MTV's reputation as a new cultural force; dissolved racial barriers in the station's treatment of music (though MTV has always denied they existed); revolutionized music video production; spawned the "making of" genre of documentary ("The Making of Filler," as Landis said at the time); helped create a market for VHS rentals and sales, because fans were desperate to see it when they wanted, rather than at the will of TV stations; and, in 2009, became the first music video to be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry (Hebblethwaite, 2013).When the production of thriller began, Jacksons album had dropped from selling 1 million copies to 200 000 a week. “Thriller” bought a new light of publicity to the album as the music video sold 9 million copies. He became known for the first black artist to be played so frequently on MTV, bringing millions of new consumers to the company purely to watch his music video.

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