Richmix, London:

As a media group, we were all given the opportunity to go to London for the day to a place called Richmix near Brick Lane where we would experience first hand information from music video directors and producers such as Liz Kessler and Corin Hardy. As well as this, we were also given a helpful talk by Pete Fraser, Chief examiner for OCR Media Studies.


Fraser gave us an insight into the history of music videos, starting from the 1920's right through to the current day. We were taught about the invention of scopitones, which are a form of Jukebox originating from France, made during WWII and the creation of MTV. I was particularly interested after learning that features such as the female gaze and voyeurism which we commonly see in today's music videos, were also featured in videos back as far as the 1940's, in particularly in one of Nat King Cole's videos.
We were also shown videos by acts such as The Beatles which were made to support the song when the band we unable to perform on programmes such as Top of The Pops.


 

We looked at videos through the decades of acts such as Madonna and Queen as well as the famous 'Thriller' video by Michael Jackson. Music videos became increasingly important in supporting the sale of a song. Acts such as Madness would create videos that would entertain their audience and their audience would look forward to the release of their new song just to see what they had done with the video. This was the case for many artists, and as videos became increasingly popular, more and more black artists began to feature on MTV, something that only Michael Jackson was able to do for a long while. 

Black rap artists such as Jay Z and 50 cent were crucial in giving off a new type of music video. Their videos would regularly contain weapons, violence and females. Jay Z's '99 Problems' video was made using 900 cuts, a ground-breaking video achievement for the early 21st century. Despite being a rapper, Jay Z wished for the video to be shot in the way in which a rock music video would be shot and therefore roped in the help of Mark Romanek, more commonly known for directing videos by David Bowie and Michael Jackson. 50 Cent's video of 'Candy Shop' gave music video viewers a different type of video, featuring female models and dancers wearing little clothing, the video immediately featured voyeurism.
As well as this, we were also taught the importance of featuring Goodwin's Analysis in our essay and exam writing and noticing it's use in music videos. 


We then received 2 talks by Kessler and Hardly in which they presented us with some of their work, with videos by acts such as Olly Murrs, The Horrors, Britney Spears and Dry The River. This gave us a fascinating first hand insight into the direction and production of music videos, the time they take, the money spent etc. I feel that this will benefit our group as we create our own video and we can take into consideration some of the factors we were told about. 


As a media group, we had to think of an original video to the song 'No Rest' by Dry The River. The song was a slow yet powerful song to which we were only played the music of before going away to lunch to consider what we would do in our video if we were to make one to the song. Our group came up with a very complex and expensive idea which Kessler and Hardy decided would be unsuitable for the £5000 budget that the band had for the video. We were eventually shown the video which Hardy himself had directed. The video was fantastic and despite such a small budget, I believe that the video was extremely well suited to the song and was a great idea.





Overall, I believe that the day was very beneficial to us as A2 media studies students. We were given an opportunity that not many other students were given which will help us immensely in completing our coursework and doing our exam in June.