1900-1919: Music Video Analysis

The era I chose to create my music video in is 1900-1919: Leading up to WWI. If I were in this time period and would want to make a video that accompanied a song, I would harness the use of stop-motion video, since it was a relatively new invention. The artist would start and stop the camera, make a very small adjustment, and then start and stop the camera again. This, when played back, captured the object moving very subtly, making it look like it was moving on its own.

During the beginning of this era, recording devices were not that high-quality whatsoever, but it was possible to have music play with a video simultaneously in later years. The popular music at the time, ragtime and jazz music, would accompany my stop-motion video. One such example is Yankee Doodle Dandy. I could possibly create clay stop-motion animation to the song Yankee Doodle Dandy to tell the story of Yankee Doodle himself.

If I were the era leading up to WWI, I would have wanted to be like Helena Smith Dayton, the first woman animator. She released her first clay stop-motion film in 1917. It was an adaptation of William Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion).

Some challenges I would

Since it was new and sought-after, I would always have an audience. Another advantage would be that there are many styles of stop-motion: either drawing, sculpture manipulation, or just object moving to tell a story. The possibilities at the time were endless. A third advantage would be that, if I was a good enough animator and didn’t make many mistakes, I would only need one roll of film, clean and easy. Everything I needed would be on that one roll, aside from the music, which would be pre-recorded and played synchronized on a phonograph. Today, there are so many different elements to production, but in the early 1900’s it was relatively