Research: History of Music Videos

History of Music Videos.

In today's lesson we researched the way in which music videos came about and how they have changed over time. Earlier years of music videos prove that they were mostly used to promote artists music and give their music a new platform. Nowadays music videos are used to create and build relationships between the artist and their target audience. They are also used as visual art for artists to represent unique ideas, thoughts and feelings that follow their music. 

Key moments in music video history...

Bessie Smith - 1929 

Ms Smith appeared in a two-reel short film entitled Saint Louis blues, this film featured a dramatised performance of the hit song. It was the first video to involve lip syncing but however is still disregarded as the first music video even though it does promote her role in the film and the hit song. 

Disney - 1940 

Walt Disney released animated film "Fantasia" in 1940. The whole film was based around classical pieces of music. Although all songs where accompanied by moving images, it was still not considered as a type of music video because it does not show any marketing techniques. 

What were music videos used for? - 1920's - 40's 

Around this era quite a lot of films were accompanied by moving images, this is especially animated ones. These types of visuals were never considered as music videos since there was no promotional content. They were looked at as basic editing of images for films and musicals. 

Tony Bennett - 1956

Tony's song "Stranger in Paradise" was accompanied by a video that was filmed of him walking through Hyde Park in London. This video was distributed all over televisions in the US and the UK. Distribution like this lead Bennett to believe that he was the first to create a music video. 

The Beatles - 1964

It is arguably said that this video set the basic vocabulary for all of today's music videos. At the time it influenced a large amount of contemporary artists to also create visuals and moving images to go along with their music. 

The Monkees - 1966-68 

The Monkees are from what originally was a TV show. Every episode included special segments that were purposely created to accompany the songs they had made.

Birth of top of the pops - 1966
In this era it was a big thing if your single was given airtime on the Top of the pops, since they had a limit set on the amount of performances they could show in the duration of the time they had. The main idea of having your single displayed on TOTP was to promote and reach out to the artists target audience.

The Beatles using videos for better purposes -1967
The video they created this time borrows elements from films such as, effects, dramatic lighting, camera angles and rhythmic editing. This was more appealing to the audience because there was more of a narrative to their work which made it more interesting to watch. Plus the visuals match the story the lyrics were telling.

Queen - 1975
Queen had created a video to replace a live performance they were unable to attend on TV. It is arguable that The Beatles had created the first music videos but Queen were the first to make one based on the aim of solely promoting their new single. Bohemian Rhapsody was the first to be made in the "video" format. It would be evident that Queen created the first music video because there is no way it could be mistake for a "short promo film".

How videos generally developed - 1970's -80's
The most key element within the development of modern day music videos was the way the video was recorded and the conventions of music video editing processes. In the industry high quality videotape recorders were used along with portable cameras, this enabled people to make and promote videos at a faster pace and it was also cheaper. Along this decade it became a standard thing that artists had singles that they would promote all the time.

MTV - 1981
The first music to be aired on MTV was from Buggles, with the song " Video Killed the Radio Star". From the early to mid 80's, artists started to get more and more sophisticated with the effect they used in their videos. This also includes the story lines/ plots involved within the music video.

Micheal Jackson - Thriller - 1984
MJ's thriller music video was the first to be considered as a short film. It is said that his video took the format of music videos to a completely new level. His video created competition within the industry. Around this time it was also apparent that the content in videos had start to become censored due to controversial aspects and ideas that may come across harmful or offensive to the audience.

MTV and video development -1980's
With the help of MTV music videos grew to play a main role in the marketing of music in the industry. People like Madonna gained great success due to skillful construction of videos with a lot of sex appeal involved in her work. MTV started the "golden era" of music videos so the industry started to be more about an artists appearance rather than their music ability.

I believe that music videos have changed drastically since the first one has been made. I say this because MTV helped birth the 'golden era' which led music videos to evolve into being about appearance and lifestyle and stopped being about the actual music.