What is a music video - Miss Miller

A music video is when a short video and a song come together that is produced and performed mainly for promotional purposes but can be for artistic messages. There are quite a few reasons why music videos are created in the first place, they are quite a useful market tool in getting someone known or even getting their music known, music videos allow people just to look up a specific artist and see their new songs, most songs that have music videos have a lot more views on youtube, meaning that sings that have music videos are much more popular amongst the global populace, also music videos have a narrative or some kind of representation of the artist or what the artist is trying to get across, videos are also used to attract a particular audience towards the video so a dance song (for example) will use many lights that will flash bright neon colours because those colours are associated with partying and going to clubs which enables the audience to relate to the music video more as it is about their lifestyle, they also are used to show the generic conventions of the music genre so the audience are able to relate to it easier, as the video is more entertaining it will make them remember it and make them want to watch it again as they thought the music video was appropriate for the song, it is also used to get people who may not have heard about their new song out there which enables the artist to get more fans in the process as they may like the video and what the artist is trying to do and one of the most important elements of a songs music video is so that the audience can relate to the artist and build up a relationship with them which can lead to more fans for an artist. There are 3 types of style of music video that an artist could try and implement for their song, performance where they try to incorporate a lot of singing and dancing in their videos, another style is using a narrative in their videos, telling the audience a story to keep their attention on the video and the final style these artists try to implement are concepts which is when the video itself may not have anything to do with the song but the video itself is trying to portray a certain message for the audience to try and consider.


The artist and the song that i'll be analyzing is Childish Gambino's or Donald Glover's 3005 and the genre that I will also be covering is rap.

There are several purposes of this music video, one purpose being used as a market tool as the song managed to achieve over 45 million views on youtube and it was also his most popular song to date on youtube, it was used to advertise his album "because the internet" as the very end of the video has a short exert from another song, in this album, called "Zealots of stockholm". Glover is trying to get the album out there as much as possible. Another purpose for this video is to convey his own representation of himself, he doesn't think too highly of himself during this song and talks about some insecurities about himself. Glover has done this to show that he is relatable as a lot of people are insecure about themselves and people praise famous people as they show no sign of any insecurities. This makes Glover different and more relatable than other artists in the industry as he isn't afraid to admit all this in the music video and lyrics of the song. An additional purpose is to make sure the audience do not forget the video, though it's very simple, it had an impact and drew the audiences attention due to the changing colours and camera angles always making it interesting to watch for the audience. The video is very ambiguous at what exactly Glover is trying to get at, some believe that all his videos are connected and that he is an alien or that he just wants a true friend to be there for him and even racism is another theory, no matter how you look at it, it's left unexplained like why the bear gets older with the others in the background while Glover remains his same age, it is to get audiences thinking about what it means.

Glover tries to show the audience more about himself and how he feels about everything, this ties in well with another purpose that the audience are able to relate to him more as even someone as rich as himself has insecurities, he doesn't feel he has a true friend which is why he is with a bear on a ferris wheel as it is a metaphor of that friend that everyone needs.

The music video also has two types of styles a music video can have, one being a performance as the singer/rapper Glover is rapping all of the lyrics of the song "3005" to the camera at a mid shot position. This camera technique makes the audience primarily focus on Glover and the teddy bear in the video which makes the song feel more personal to the audience. This leads to the audience establishing a connection to Glover as they focus on what he's saying in the video and what these lyrics are trying convey. After the audience listen to the lyrics and understand what the artist is illustrating they relate to him because of the fact he talks about his insecurities.

The music video is also concept based as the artist tries to convey a hidden meaning in the video. The use of miss-en-scene portrays this clearly, the audience can see in the foreground a teddy bear that sits with Glover throughout the ride, when the camera returns back the bear is noticeably damaged or torn. This is supposed to mean that is has been a few years since the last shot which is surprising and confusing for the audience because the camera hasn't left the ride nor has the ride stopped, the only one that hasn't aged at all is Glover himself as he remains the same age. The ferris wheel connotes a childlike nature of the artist because that's where you would expect to find kids riding a ferris wheel, however Glover is on the ride instead, this could mean he has a childlike nature which ties in with his rappers personality, Childish Gambino, and the rapid ageing of the bear(another childlike convention) could mean that he has grown up but hasn't lost these childlike sensibilities.

The cinematography in the video is very limited as the camera doesn't change much and the video is done in one shot. However the first technique I will talk about is the mid shot that is used 3 times in the video where it's the bear and Glover sitting in the carriage. The mid shot displays the bear moving around and is alive while Glover does the same but talks/raps about the fact he doesn't have a true friend. This shows that Glover has a bond with the teddy bear as it feels like he's talking to him the mid shot is repeated for a different time Glover talks about how his "friends" use him so the teddy bear is almost a best friend to Glover. The audience understand that Glover is trying to use the bear to relate to his artist's name and nature because he talks to the bear like a friend which something a child would do, however Glover on the other hand has changed it so that the person has never had a friend which is why he always talks to the bears if it were friend throughout his whole life.

The next use of cinematography that i'll be talking about is the shallow focus that is utilized throughout the video. The shallow focus is used when Glover is in frame with the bear, the people in the background are blurred as well as the carriages they are on unless the camera starts moving in every direction which it does after every verse. The effect the shallow focus has on the audience is that they pay attention to Glover and the bear closely for any changes and ignore anything out of focus. The audience will then watch it again and look in the back ground and see the people who are blurred slowly age after each time the chorus has finished and a verse starts, they appreciate the lengths the artist is willing to go to in order to portray his own impression of himself.

The editing in the video is very hard to talk about but there are some clear uses of editing techniques near the end of the video. The edit that is used can be argued as a fade or a straight cut, the fade because it suddenly cuts to black, and a straight cut because after the clip has ended there is a long pause before it returns to the Zealots of Stockholm that plays at the end. The editing technique is used to show the differences of the two songs, the straight cut encourages audiences to look at the changes of style, the one before was normal with some strange visuals with the camera movement going all over the place, but the second is slow, the lights are flashing and everything is blurred and conveys a thriller like atmosphere, this relates back to the songs as the one before has upbeat sound while Zealots of Stockholm that plays at the end is obviously a different tune entirely. The audience will then start to notice the differences at the end of the video compared to the rest and think that it's another song in his upcoming album which encourages them to buy the album as the part used at the end is a very short sample.

When it comes to rap songs and their videos, there are certain codes and conventions that are used over and over, one being that the artist that made the song will be featured prominently throughout the video to draw attention to him for the audience. There are a couple of codes and conventions used in this music video that relate to the rap genre, first is that the artist is prominent throughout the video most of the time performing the video, this is done through the use of cinematography in the video using a mid shot of him and the bear sitting on the ferris wheel. This is for marketing purposes as his audience are seeing him in the video and are able to relate to him more as they can put a face to his music, the audience feel as if the artist is sitting and telling them the story as he isn't focusing on anything else, which enables the audience to build up a relationship with the artist further.

Another convention of the rap genre is that they try and stay true to their image in terms of music, Glover accomplishes this convention through the use of a teddy bear and some people on a ferris wheel. The idea of the artist using the teddy bear, the location of the amusement park and the bright colours is that he is relating all his visuals back to his rapper alias or Childish Gambino. The audience will then interpret the imagery to think that's in correlation of his artists name and they will in turn think he is staying true to his image before, therefore he is able to connect the visuals with his own personality which the audience then identify and realize how personal the song and music video is to the artist.

The last convention i'll discuss is one that the artist instead challenges, this is the use of the vibrant colours when he is on the ferris wheel. The convention of rap music videos is that normally they are dark but this is almost like a pop song due to the lighting, granted it's filmed at night, but most rap artists never use pink, yellow, or blue lighting in the video because it can be distracting for the audience. On the other hand, Glover challenging the convention shows that he is able to relate this visuals back to his own name making the music video feel as though it was a personal project from the audiences perspective.

The video appeals to his fans but it also appeals to fans of the rap genre as well, the song lyrics and video have a much deeper meaning that the audience need to find out which in turn, raises discussion about the video and allows others to be informed about the artist and the song itself to create further discussion. The song is more important to his fans because they may have watched this after seeing his open letter on instagram about his insecurities and feel sympathy towards him and start to get worried which enables them to build up more of a relationship with him and start listening to his music quite often to see what he does next, which is why so many people watched it, because they knew the video would be a message to his fans about what he feels he's going through at the moment.

In conclusion, this music video has taught me a couple of things about what a music video can be, it taught me that relating to your target audience is good as they will appreciate your music and get others to watch your songs in order to create a discussion about the songs and the videos' meanings, i have also learnt that it is good to incorporate conventions of a music genre into your video as fans of a genre can relate to it a lot easier as they will know if it is a rap song just from the conventions used in the song. I think music videos are possibly the best way to get fans to pay attention to the song as well as the music the artist may produce, either way, it's a good way of advertising yourself. However, though I have analyzed a particular song in the genre of rap, it isn't one that i would like to make into a video because it requires someone with an amazing amount of confidence and passion for the genre, and if one person in the group isn't a fan, then the whole video called fall to pieces.

History of music videos

The audience can use a range of different methods to watch music videos that have been made for specific songs by certain artists, sometimes these videos are the reason why people know of a specific band or artist. The ways the audience can watch these videos include going onto youtube to find videos performed by a band or going on the TV and looking for a music channel that also shows a wide range of music videos owned by different artists.

The first music channel that was ever created was called "MTV" which was created 1981 on the 1st August, this enabled people to watch their favourite bands or artists perform their new songs that was soon to be released for them all, it was a way of creating hype and buzz for the audience as they really want to get this song so they can play it themselves. The first official music video to be shown on MTV was "video killed the radio star", the video had an underlying meaning that television and the advancements of technology were rendering the radio obsolete, the song was extremely successful due to this video hitting the mainstream and being played everywhere, this video can be argued to have started the music video into what it is today due to the huge amount of success the song had, so this song was popular in 1979 in England an unknown in America, MTV changed this massively when the music video first aired and the song gained a huge support in America. Many people noticed this trend and so the music video as we know it today was born and MTV had become so popular, by 2015, MTV had their channel in 93,240,000 american households which just shows how far music videos have come. There have now been countless other programmes trying to implement what MTV had done but they still remain one of the most dominant ones on this genre of television. However music videos changed and some seemed to create controversy to gain their popularity and pushed the boundaries of what was allowed in music videos, a band called Duran Duran made a music video for a song called "girls on film" that featured a lot of women that were extremely revealing throughout the video, to the point that it may be considered pornographic by some viewers, this is where they had to introduce some form of censorship to stop videos like these getting to the public that could be offended by the videos content. Nowadays, songs on mtv can be shown only after watershed (9:00PM) that are deemed offensive or adult in a certain way, some words are even muted just so that kids don't learn how to curse from their idols.


Youtube was a form of social media that allowed users or audiences to search for any video that they could think of that existed and had been uploaded. Youtube changed the music industry forever, youtube allowed users or audiences to look for their favourite singers online and watch some of their artists songs just because they are good fans, the benefit of doing this over watching the tv for it was that they could choose what to listen to. The most popular videos on YouTube are songs with music videos, this shows that music videos can gather a great amount of support and become very successful over songs without official music videos, to summarize, songs that have music videos are much more popular. A song that pretty much proves this little theory is a song that is known around the world but without a music video is psy's gangnam style which received over a staggering 2 billion views and counting to this day. It had all the tropes that make a song so successful, including a dance trend that was easy to do, catchy beat and was just funny to some people. After its release it was parodied by thousands but they were not successful as the original song was a parody of itself, you can't parody a parody and that's why the music video stood out far above the other music videos on youtube. However this shaped many other successful videos in the sense that it would use several different locations that vary in different ways, it also made it necessary to create a dance trend as seen in this video and finally it also created a sort of trend that it would show how perfect ones life is as the audience see in the video that he has lots of girls with him, this allows men to be influenced by the video as well as being able to relate to it.



















As music videos began to evolve and become increasingly more popular, they would make more money, if a video looks amazing and you, the audience are able to relate to it, those artists responsible for the creation of the video make more money off of the video. To show the ways in which that music videos have changed with their budgets increasing lets use the first music video shown on MTV which is 'video killed the radio star' to one of the most expensive music videos ever made which is Michael Jackson's 'scream' which is a music video about the future and space time travel, it is a very strange video so it is mostly up to the audiences interpretation of what it is about. 'video killed the radio star' (VKTRS) had a budget of £60,000 which really isn't much compared to 'scream' which had a staggering budget of $7,000,000, this is evident in the special effects of both videos, for today's standards VKTRS looks quite primitive in its effects but as a first, it was good for its time, it just didn't age well for the most part, however, scream is impressive for its visuals being quite abstract, also there are even parts where they are almost walking on walls that were made with movable sets to give the illusion that they are actually walking on the walls, this increase in budget could be to make a video that the audience would remember and due to how abstract scream is, a lot of people will remember its rather strange visuals. The technology and special effects for VKTRS at the time were groundbreaking in terms of music videos and really upped the boundaries of what artists were allowed to do with their videos, also for this video, lots of technology was created for the purpose of getting the songs message across like the tv's scattered throughout the video. Scream on the other hand is a clear demonstration of how special effects and technology had gotten better over the years as said earlier the fact that they had moving sets to make it look as if they were on walls walking around it also had stylistic camera shots as well as other edits on the big tv screens, both music videos try and portray the future in a sense and both had pushed the boundaries set previously, like the music videos becoming so enormously popular or becoming extremely expensive. Viewings of these music videos have increased as time went on for youtube as VKTRS has nearly 9,000,000 views which is impressive as it is quite old and less know today, but compared to screams 42,000,000, it's easy to see why there have been dramatic changes in the music video genre in terms of views on youtube, this could be partly to the artists' reputation as the boggles aren't well known today, but Michael Jackson is still as popular as he was a few years back and was regarded the king of pop for a while as he had some massive hits in his time.

In conclusion, this research has enabled me to understand the first stepping stones of the music video and how some managed to set the bar for others who tried to do the same and emulate a particular style as their own, this research has also given me an insight as to what can make a music video even more popular and how it can start trending among audiences. I have also been able to see how music videos have changed and why they've changed. This research will help me when making my own video as it has given me knowledge on how to make a music video and what is needed for a music video to be successful.