Textual analysis of 'The Marvellettes Please Mr. Postman'

I decided to analyse the music video for The Marvellettes 'Please Mr Postman' as this is the song that we have chosen to do our music video on.
When analyzing the video, I found that all the shots are performance based and there is no narrative included. This is relevant to the genre of music which is Motown and also the time period the video was shot in.
The video was shot in the early 60's which is the reason why it is performance based. Technology at the time would of been basic, therefore special effects etc. wouldn't of been used. The video is also shot in black and white, again showing the era and how basic the technology would of been.
In the video we get close ups of the lead singer 'Gladys Horton'. It was typical of that time period to have a band with one main singer and a few backing singers.
The lyrics are suggesting that a woman is awaiting to here from her partner who is away at war. She is begging the postman to give her a letter from her boyfriend/husband which is again relevant to the time period as letters would of been the only means of communication.
The music and the visuals match as it is a performance based video however in order to modernize the video/song, we have decided to include narrative as well as performance in our story-boarding.
There is a strong focus on the artist 'The Marvellettes' and the song as that would of been what sold the record. This contrasts to artists today who are mostly created by management teams to sell records and appeal to their target audience.

The History Of Music Video

After Edison had invented the gramophone in the 1900's, the ability to record audio meant that developments within the music industry began to happen. Experiments with the ability to synchronise sound with vision led to the first sound film 'The Jazz Singer' in 1927. This was a massive milestone as it meant that  artists could create video's to go with their music in order to promote themselves. TV shows such as 'Ready Steady Go' gave artists the platform to showcase there latest tracks which gave them the opportunity to target their music at wider audiences as well as entertaining them.

In 1964 BBC introduced 'Top Of The Pops' which is significant as it was the first time that music was listed in terms of charts. Artists would fight to be at the no.1 spot and especially the coveted Christmas no.1. It showed the competition within the industry as bands/artists all wanted to be the best and sell the most records.

Queen are arguably one of the biggest bands there has ever been, and when 'Bohemian Rhapsody' first came out in 1975, it changed everybody's attitude to the music video. It was the first time that we had seen special effects which came as part of a technological development. I think that the significance of this video was that it was a performance from beginning to end and was used to entertain audiences. The star theory is also relevant here as they were made too look/act in a certain way in order to sell records. The music video is over 6 minutes long which is a massive contrast to the average pop song today of 3 minutes. However it could be argued that this is due to music video's in recent years were relatively new and seen as more of a form of entertainment. Differently, today we have access to a wider variety of music video's through sites such as Youtube therefore they are taken for granted.

1981 saw the introduction of the first music channel 'MTV'. This is significant as the availability of cabel/satellite television enabled nice broadcasting. Now MTV have specific channels for different genre's of music such as; 'MTV Dance' 'MTV Rocks' and 'MTV HITS'. This makes it easier for audiences to narrow down the genre's of music video that they are interested in watching/listening too.

After this development artists began to make big budget music video's which have now become iconic. Michael Jacksons 'Thriller' reportedly cost around £500,000 to make and lasts around 14 minutes. It combined narrative, performance and special effects all in one and it arguably one of the most famous music video's in history.