Research - History of Music Videos

The History of Music Videos

How have modern day music videos changed from traditional music video?
Modern day music videos are all based around the concept of entertainment, artist entertain their fans and other by glamourizing their life, showcasing their other talents in an extravagant way, whereas in the past music videos where just to allow the audience to connect with the artist.

 Timeline

1920-1940

Many films where accompanied by moving images, especially animations. These were not considered as music videos, just basic editing of imagines to film, musicals which was a big genre of film during this period.

1929- Bessie Smith – She appeared in a short film, it was the first film that ever showed music performed by an artist.

1940- Walt Disney released Fantasia, an animated based around famous piece of classical music. Not quite a musical, but heavily rely on musical narrative, it’s a genre of music associated with a film. This is how Disney found their fame.

1950-1960

1956- Tony Bennet- his video involves him walking In Hyde Park London, for his song ‘Stranger in Paradise’, the single and video was distributed on US and UK televisions only, leading to Bennet claiming that he made the first ever music video.

1964 – The Beetles- Key moments this video arguably set out the basic visuals and vocabulary for today’s music videos, influencing a vast number of contemporary musicians at the time to create similar moving images to accompany their music videos

1966-1968 – The ‘mokees’ was a TV show. Each episode included a specifically made film segment that was created to accompany their songs that was used in their TV Series.

1966- The Birth of the top of the pops

The importance of the TOTP to promote a single meant that artists have to compete for air time as TOTP had a limit on number of performances it showed.

1967- These Videos used Techniques borrowed from films such as effects, dramatic lighting, camera angles and rhythmic editing.

1970-1980 NEW ERA

1975- Queen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Created to replace a live performance on TV, the Beatles had created videos, however queen were the first to rete a video specifically for that song to be played on TV. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was the first made on the video format; therefore the title of first music video would be accurate.

1979- The key developments of the modern music video were a video recording with editing processes. High quality videotape recorders and portable video cameras enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos. Quickly and cheaply rather than using filming equipment which was expensive.

By mid 80s, releasing a video to accompany a new single had to become standards. Artists were using high quality budget to create these, for example ‘The Jackson 5’

1981- MTV launch, the first video to be aired is the ‘Buggles’ Video Killed the radio star, In the early mid 80s artists started to use more sophisticated effects in their videos, and added a storyline or plot to the music video

1984- Michael Jackson, Thriller. A short film a music video that has beginning, middle and end. Jacksons Thriller took the music video format to another level

TOTP started to censor video content, so another approach was produced a video that would be banned or edited so using controversy and publicity to promote the release. Early examples of this tactic were Duran Duran’s girls on film

1980s- Madonna owned a great deal of her success to the skilful construction and seductive appeal of her videos.

 Although many see MTV as the star of a golden era of music videos and the unparalleled success od a new art form in popular culture others see it as it as shattering the death of the true musical artist because physical appeal is now critical to popularity to a degree.

 

How have music videos changed over time?

Over the years music videos have changed, at the beginning music videos where created for movie purposes, not all with the thought of it being its own mini movie, but over the year’s music videos have developed their own concept. The audience has developed people now expect music videos, whereas in the past music videos where a privilege to the fans. With the different Genres that there are now artist use music videos to express their feelings and showcase themselves.

Conclusion

It is important to know about the history of music videos because they allow an individual it gain knowledge on how the music video came about and the original concept.