RickMix Trip:

Last week, all media A-Level classes went on a trip to Liverpool Street to study music videos with a company called RichMix. The lectures taught us all about the various music videos that have been produced and how they have developed over time. We looked at videos from the 1930's, such as 'A Colour Box' by Len Lye, Nat King Cole videos from the 1940's and the development on factors that we see everyday in modern videos such as Voyeurism and the Female Gaze. We then looked into the era when music videos and artists became very popular within both Britain and America, artists such as the Beatles, Elvis and Queen were featured.
We then learnt about the 1980's and how female artists as well as black artists began to appear on the market and became very popular, we looked predominately at Madonna and then went on to look at 50 Cent and his videos. Artists and music videos were mainly becoming popular due to the introduction of MTV in 1981 in which made music videos both easy to access and watch. Along with the beginning of MTV, we also looked into the introduction of more controversial videos, examples included 50 Cents 'Candy Shop' and Jay Z's '99 Problems'.
As a group we then analysed many music videos and related them to Paul Goodwin's famous six step analysis in which we had previously learnt in class.
For our afternoon session, each school had to come up with an individual idea for a music video, the video had to be for the song 'No Rest' by 'Dry the River' and the production had to cost under £5000. Our school came up with the idea of having three main characters with a desire to fight for something they love and do not want to lose. This idea was very suitable as the lyrics of the song mentioned the want to keep something and how depressed they would be if they lost this thing, however due to the fact that the video included three people within various locations, it was too expensive to fit within the brief given to us.
Overall, the trip was both very entertaining and really helped me with the topic of music videos, to add to this, it has also given me good tips on what to include and remember when completing my coursework, just simple tips such as making sure a lot of time is taken to film the video as this is when timing problems could occur.