Rhetoric Rationale

The video is meant to be a brief description of the immense impact that MTV had on the music landscape, especially through consumption and production.  There are obviously more nuanced books and videos on this matter, but a brief take on this complicated topic is my aim, and fits in the universe that this subject matter resides in (long form media that explains this).

My video resides primarily on narration with related video.  I consider this rhetoric because it stimulates two senses simultaneously (auditory and visual), and the viewer needs to independently relate the narration to the video playing (which also has its own audio playing at a reduced volume in the background).  More importantly, I chose this rhetoric because obviously both elements independently are less attention grabbing, but primarily it is for the viewer to take in video, making instant judgement on it, and let the narration mold the judgement into a sort of proto-schema so that the information given can fit into the greater message (which is the MTV impact).

At the beginning, I narrate an introduction while non-MTV videos play.  I talk about pre-MTV music videos, so I chose to play captivating pre-MTV videos, showing that exciting and iconic bands had content but had no consistent medium to show them.  Everyone knows who Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, and Queen are, but to persuade the audience on how good videos were being ignored, I showed sections of The Song Remains The Same (1976),  Van Halen Live in Oakland (1981) video when they play Unchained, and Queen's famous Bohemian Rhapsody video (1975).  As you can see below, it's pretty captivating to watch Eddie Van Halen do a scissor kick while soloing.

During that first narration up until I mention MTV's birth, I play "Video Killed the Radio Star", the first song and music video played on MTV, and this just amps up the rhetoric during some narration that does not directly mention the videos played.  This means that there are 3 messages at once coming at the viewer: direct narration, secondary video that accompanies the general narration subject, and subtle music that's a nod to what the whole video is about.  The listener does not need or shouldn't feel the need to pay attention to the background music, but it's an accent that means something if viewers dig further into the matter afterward.  Or if they listen to the words briefly, they get the message.  

Immediately, we switch to the first major MTV promo advertisement from 1982, and it features the famous "I Want My MTV" phrase.  The ad reels you in with colorful fast moving images that apply to the narration, but not directly.  The video is about MTV, and having the ad's phrases audible while I talk about how MTV used old videos and free promo videos to survive initially can be confusing.  My aim there is to listen to me but show how earnest MTV was, as well as show the stars whose videos were played for free (Pat Benatar, Mick Jagger, and Pete Townshend).  I realize that I'm combining an ad that explains what MTV is with narration on MTV's video selection, but the time constraint led me to combine those.  The combined rhetoric still makes the viewer realize the early MTV appearance, whether with narration or with video. 

It immediately goes into the first seconds of MTV's broadcast.  I used this independent video as rhetoric because the rhetoric MTV used in 1981 at their broadcast launch is what I'm replicating.  It's a launch of a service unlike any other before it, and the same goes for my video: I described the pre-MTV days, and very briefly the start of MTV, but for the audience to feel the scope of this, I used the broadcast recording because it honestly works.  It's a nice break, it is captivating, and relays MTV's early mission statement.

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I use videos from Billy Idol, Neneh Cherry, and Duran Duran to show that these bands drove the image that I was describing in the narration.  I was talking about how bands with no radio play commanded cultural appeal and impact in different senses, and I flipped through videos that described this.  I chose the videos I did because it fits what I am trying to persuade the viewers into believing: I first say that these videos were not on the radio, and then play three different videos with clear differences in aesthetic, just as I describe the different types of aesthetics MTV influenced (edgy, pop, and sexy).  This way the narration gives information and the video is proof.  I had the choice of more sexy rhetoric from the Duran Duran video, but I did not want to shock too many people.

When I introduce Michael Jackson, I narrate of how his famous album was stalling in sales.  I  used the clip of Billie Jean where Jackson's dancing is dramatized by 3 simultaneous freeze frames, slow motion (mirroring his slowdown in sales), and the framing of his eyes while he dances, closely matching the tone of the issue he was facing in my narration.  I then introduce the Thriller video as I mention the video and it's ensuing success, and it is (hopefully) a familiar video for the audience, assuring them that the success I describe is real, but was preceded by drama that almost killed the album.  The rhetoric of Jackson's dramatic moment in the Billie Jean video being replicated by the combination of my narration and the clip AND the familiar Thriller video should convince the audience my point.

 I transition into a description of how an errant video by Billy Squier killed his career.  This may seem sudden or not along the lines of the success stories I have been describing, but I hope that with this opposing story that the power of MTV becomes apparent to the audience.

 I then transition into a narration about how  MTV had a lot of indirect and direct power over band's decisions about videos.  While I describe MTV's place and practices, I interrupt the comforting traditional video with subdued audio with a kind of disrupting audio with quick broken visuals that differ from the fluid narration.  The narration rhetoric is clear (expressing the dominance of MTV) but the video sequence is more complicated. 

The video sequence is made of the MTV Lost Weekend promo and the Dial MTV promo.  The Lost Weekend promo shows the extravagance of MTV with a jet taking off, and the Dial MTV promo shows the MTV logo crushing a caller, followed by a brief "MTV controlled everything" title card.  At first it is distracting, especially with the takeoff noise, dial tone, and silence audio sequence grating on the audience.  But, because it repeats, the viewer can listen to the narration without missing any new visuals while getting the subtext of my narration.   The point of all of this disruptive video sequence is to show that 1) MTV was not perfect even early on and 2) the images of extravagance, getting crushed, and the title card should illustrate the MTV practices in their more extremes, possibly at the expense of viewers.

The following clips (an excerpt from a David Geffen documentary and from The Evolution of Metal docu-series) are used to show the power of MTV.  The rhetoric here is the trusted source giving information.  Clearly professional video clips with anecdotes give stories more effectively than I could with narration, and it gives the audience a break from the narration and hyper video sequence.  I spoke generally, but these specific anecdotal clips really show what I meant, and that storytelling is good pathos and ethos for my video that is dependent on logos.

The next sequence involves 4 hair metal videos playing simultaneously fading into 1 grunge, 1 alternative, 1 rap, and 1 rap show video playing together.  The narration talks about MTV transitioning their programming because of the homogenous programming in the 80s.  I have 4 hair metal videos playing at the same time to show that all the videos did look the same and looked a bit ridiculous.  By replicating the scene with 4 different videos playing at once, it is a visual representation of what I was trying to express.  I had 3 different genre videos and a critical voice of a genre (rap/hip hip via MTV Yo Raps, using the Tupac clip) to show how MTV retained importance but became varied in the mainstream  (rather than the different shows they had, which I did not describe because of the time limit).

This rhetoric choice (of 4 simultaneous videos) is done to show the contrast of late 80s MTV and early 90s MTV.

I left the rap video going in the corner before the Madonna clip to 1) keep the audience entertained while I shift subjects, 2) keep establishing the changing genre movement from rock to rap, and 3) show that this was occurring at the same time as the subject matter I was introducing.

I use the Madonna clip of her essentially humping the stage at the 1984 Video Music Awards to show that the bravado that Lady Gaga or Kanye West present is similar if not dwarfed by the tone set by Madonna.  The rhetoric here is pretty apparent:  the shock value of her behavior still holds up, and isolated clip gives the audience the shock they need to believe that the VMA's modern shock value (already instilled in their head) has an early root, and I use that shock to convince them.

Now I transition into reality show theme songs and introductions, which are different from a music video but at this point, the video is ending, and we return to the standard video/audio with my narration like the video's beginning.  Here, the timeline of MTV's progress I regulated during the video starts to slip into a more amorphous period of transition from the 90s to today.  The rhetoric is now just reliant on the shift from music videos to actors and theme music and spoken word in the background.  The subject familiarity and change should be enough for the audience to connect with the objective (that MTV made reality TV because money became an issue).  This was emphasized by the title card stating "This is why MTV does not play much music" while I talk about making money off music.

The final part uses modern artists using the video medium creatively to end the video with a positive note, using modern videos and stars to show that the music video itself is still an important art form, and that the lessons learned from the early MTV years are clearly apparent.  By using current artists that have the things I listed before (visual appeal in all of its forms), I hope to convince the audience with the visual rhetoric that what the video tried to prove still rings true.

Basically, this whole video uses the basic audio/video with narration as the rhetorical tool to convince the audience of all of MTV's practices and how they (and others) changed what being a popular music artists meant.  I changed it up a bit, with background music, documentary clips, rapid clip sequence,  and two 2x2 video displays fading into one another to emphasize certain points, to contrast different parts of the video, and deliver a subtext in a creative or concise matter.

 

 

 

Here is a link of the evolution of metal episode, BBC American Rock episode,  and the David Geffen documentary that helped inspire this.  The David Geffen episode is silent from copyright issues, but the clip in my video captures the source nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IItvRpYnQs (1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IoPzcybmGg (2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvA4o7pTtXY (3)

Some MTV information was derived from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6jz65YRCy8

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the description of MTV, the tone of the video, and the organization was heavily inspired from this book:

I Want My MTV - The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution

http://www.amazon.com/Want-My-MTV-Uncensored-Revolution/dp/B0085RZHXA