Music Videos are a commonly used selling point for Music artists, to engage their audience in more ways than just music. They are like time capsules, capturing all social and political views of the time, and over time, they show how an artist changes. Some Music videos are iconic, this generally means that they were a huge part of the era, and symbolize life at that time for example Michael Jackson's Thriller, it was such a big thing because it was the most expensive music video ever made at that time, and the special effects and choreography was the best that money could buy, people therefore loved it because it was something they had never seen before, and it was more like a movie than a music video. conventional music videos were just concert footage or the band playing in a studio. Thriller was popular because it told a story, and this made the music itself much more powerful and made it have a bigger impact on the audience, and this is why music videos are made - to make a bigger impact on the audience. Directors started getting much more creative and experimental with music videos in the 80s and 90s. They started to have narratives inter-spliced with footage of the band playing, and they started experimenting with animation, for example Take on Me by Aha, this was an incredible leap in creativity for the time, they used a type of animation called rotoscope, which is when they trace over live action to make it look like an animated world. All the animated frames were hand drawn, and took 16 weeks to complete.
Nowadays, music videos have become highly artist central, almost always showcasing the artist more than whatever narrative is along the video. Especially rap videos, music has become more and more digital, so its not so instrument based as it used to be. This has also changed what can be done in music videos, because digital sounds can create immense atmospheres in music, so you can do far more abstract things with the video, whereas before these techniques wouldn't fit in with the sound of the music.
Because we have much more technology, and better equipment, we can make more surreal music videos, with more costumes, and locations. W can have virtually any location, thanks to green screen. Our methods of animation have also improved greatly, so we can make better quality animations, and special effects. For example this is a home made video a man made in space - people NEVER used to be able to do things like that before.
