Music Videos

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This module treats the music video as a distinct genre with its own ways of organizing materials, exploring themes, and constructing identity. Belonging at an intersection between music, film, television, cultural, ethnic and communication studies, this module provides a description of the ways that musical and visual codes operate in music video. Lectures interweave this theoretical basis with historical background, journeying from the earliest examples of musical shorts in the late 1920s, to the promos of the 50s and 60s, through the MTV era, and to the latest developments brought about by Youtube. This overview takes account of the influence of institutional structures, technology and cultural context. Lectures move from an investigation of video's component parts (narrative, editing, setting etc.) to looking closely at individual case studies. These will span a range of performers in multiple genres. By attending to features held in common by many videos, and features particular to a single video, we can begin to understand how music video works.