What books and videos would you recommend to an absolute beginner of Chess? The entirety of my current chess knowledge consists solely of the valid moves which the pieces can make. I've played a few matches, but my moves tend to be aimless, by this I mean they lack any purpose. What books and video series would you recommend so that I can bring some structure to my chess game? I'm looking for something of an absolute beginner's difficulty that goes on to an intermediate level.
Absolute beginner? My best advice to you would be getting/buying Chess Master Grand Master Edition game. Install the Josh Waitzkin Academy (it will ask you while you're installing it's easy to notice) and go through his tutorial.

It's an interactive tutorial that teaches you how to start thinking as a chess player, it's completely voiced and will have puzzles and questions as it goes from one level to another forcing you to put what you just learned into practice. When you finish the entire tutorial, you should have at the end at least basic knowledge about openings (including some traps and how to avoid them!) middle game tactics and some sacrifices and last but definitely not least basic understanding of end game.

At the start it will even have you slightly practice memorizing the chess board annotations (like where b4 is or any other square) which definitely helps in the long run when you go into higher levels of chess.

After you're completely done with this tutorial and master it (you will most likely watch it more than once throughout your chess career to understand everything completely 100%) there is another course, which is less of a tutorial and more of a high level analysis between a GM and a ferocious Chess machine. 

I advise you to not just watch and finish these tutorials but to also go out and play with other people... If there's a chess club out there near you or at least you can reach by bus or something, definitely go there and play against stronger players and you'll improve even faster.

Hope I helped :)