CLIPPED.TV heads to National Film and Sound Archives bringing with it Canberra music video premieres and director Ray Argall

"At the beginning, you start with a work of art that is a song - that's terrific and we all love that," he says.

"But the moment you start putting pictures to it and creating something else, and there is an element of performance from the artists, you are creating an audiovisual art form with it."

Music video was the medium that Argall first got his start in. Fresh out of film school in his twenties, he and other filmmakers found themselves drawn together with young musicians.

"We came together to throw a whole lot of ideas and come up with something that was not always linear," he says.

"Sometimes it was purely atmospheric and ambient which with music you can do that. I think, certainly for us in the 80s, it was an opportunity.

"There was a little bit of money. It was a way to be sustainable in an industry that is incredibly difficult to actually make a living in.

"You might go work on a documentary or a feature film or a short drama, but the music videos were a fantastic way of actually keeping us fluid within that era."

Argall would go on to make videos for the likes of Midnight Oil, The Hoodoo Gurus, Crowded House and Split Enz, among others, as well as working in film and television.

In 2016 Ray launched a business restoring archival films, starting with his back catalogue and expanding to the work of other filmmakers.

Among the restored works are the music videos he did for Read About It by Midnight Oil, Message To My Girl by Split Enz and Good Times by Hoodoo Gurus, which will be shown on the big screen when CLIPPED.TV heads to the National Film and Sound Archive on Friday.

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An evening dedicated to the art of the music video, CLIPPED.TV will see Argall take part in a Q&A, as well as the premiere of Canberran music videos including L.I by Hope Wilkins (directed by Claire Warren), With Your Body by Kirrah Amosa (directed by Nic Vevers), Two Steps by Betty Alto (directed by Dan Unsworth), Begin Again by Jason Maynard (directed by Ashlee Kate Robertson), Sink Like A Stone by BIILMANN featuring rapper Citizen Kay (directed by Anthony Bowler) and A Happy Song by Hedy Blaazer (directed by Liliana Blaazer-Grossi).

Mixing the old with the new is a good match, according to Argall, with the freedom that directors were able to take with music videos in the 1980s having a resurgence within the artform.

"When the money started to come in, say the mid-80s to the late 80s, and some of these clips hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on them, that of course brought with it demands," he says.

"It became more corporate and commercial and I think that existed for a while and recently, in the last 10 years, there's been very little money in music videos because you can't make much money off YouTube.

"For the people making the music videos, there's much less money there ever was in our era.

"But people are still making music videos which is fabulous. It seems like it's a free creative enterprise again. Really, anything goes."

Perhaps the lasting life of the music video as a medium is due to its power to elevate a song. As CLIPPED.TV director Samuel Bright says, where there is a great song, there is usually a great video not too far behind.

"Often it's the music videos themselves that have instigated a big part of why the song has become successful," he says.

"And also, you don't often see songs that do well where the videos are bad. I think generally if an artist is good the videos need to be good.

"That doesn't mean they have to be really slick - a lo-fi video could be funny or have a great concept. It is all about engagement and you just have to keep an audience watching."

Most people would have that one music video that sticks in their head as the music video. Perhaps it's the now-iconic video for Michael Jackson's Thriller, or the YouTube famous treadmill clip for OK Go's Here It Goes Again.

Whatever it is, chances are you've never seen it on anything larger than a television screen. In some instances, you may not have seen it on anything than a phone screen.

Not only, as Argall says, does this limit how much of the video you can appreciate, but Bright goes as far to say that the context one views a video means you don't experience the art form in a "pure way".

"If you're on a bus and you've got headphone in, the bus is jiggling around and there are creaks and things coming through, talking from a purist point of view, that's affecting your experience," he says.

"By default with CLIPPED.TV, you're in that environment and you're confronted with the video. It's interesting watching people's reactions to the videos.

"You get laughs, and you get a lot of interesting reactions, especially from the filmmakers' point of view. They don't usually get the opportunity to see what people think."