The History Of Music Videos

Today music videos accompany almost every chart song and are seen as a vital part to the promotion and selling of the song due to the fascinating eye catching effects and conventions used to attract audience. The first music videos and promos were filmed in the mid 1950’s however this was a development from as early as the 1920’s where short animation films were accompanied by music, this was called ‘visual music’.

In 1964 ‘The Beatles’ released one of the first major music videos ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ directed by ‘Richard Lester’. This had major impact on the music industry and was the real starting point to music videos becoming a vital part of the music society due to the huge interest the band gained from the new element of a short film especially designed to accompany a song. This videos main narrative and focus was on the bands live performance in front of a studio audience which is still a common convention used in new music videos we see today. The video was also filmed in black and white and introduced purposely shakey camera movement which might be seen as a clever technique to show atmosphere from point of view or even to keep pace within the video.

Due to the interest ‘The Beatles’ gained from their music video, the popular TV comedy ‘The Monkees’ following the adventurous lives of four young men decided to introduces specially made film segments to accompany Monkees songs used in the series; this was the start to the development of the music video genre.

Yet again ‘The Beatles’ raised the bar with their new music videos for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ as they started to introduce new filming elements such as dramatic lighting, special effects, different camera shots and angles, and started editing their video to the beat of the song. This created a stronger link between the music and video by illustrating the song through a visual narrative rather than just showing the band playing live; this is where the cut always between the band playing live and illustrative clips relating to the song that we see today come from.

As music videos started to be more commonly developed they started to be shown commonly in cinemas and as technology improved a huge inspiration for the music industry to create videos was the brand new program introduced called ‘Top Of The Pops’. This started to create competition within the music industry due to the concept that it would play the top music charts with their accompanying videos; this helped increase songs sales as viewers wanted to see the videos they enjoyed on the next episode of the program.

In 1975 the band ‘Queen’ had impact with their music video for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as they decided to use TV networks to their advantage by giving them their video for free in a clever plot to make more money in sales due to the audience they would attract by the networks playing the video.

In 1981 MTV was launched, a channel devoted to music due to the widening field for money in music videos and the still rising competition in the music industry. This created an even fiercer competition for bands to create eye catching videos with the new technology of camera, lighting, special effects.

‘Michael Jacksons’ ‘Thriller’ yet again added new development into the music video by producing a full small narrative that had a start and finish that was displayed through video and described through song. This video was 15 minutes long and cost millions of pounds to make, the video started of the imitable dance that is still related to the song today.

‘Duran Duran’ created impact in the music video industry by introducing explicit censored content into their video. This was done to play to their advantage by creating controversy and publicity for the band, hence promoting the release and attracting audience in a different manor. This helped define the genres of music video that we see today in the way that different genre’s of song will use stereotypes and include similar content throughout that genre. For instance in a rap music video, as an audience we expect to see more explicit content than the video of a pop song.

These early on developments are the footings to the conventional elements we expect to see in the music videos today however due to new developments it has become apparent that music videos do not have to follow conventions to be a good video as some of the best videos break many conventions in artistic ways that grab viewers attention.

Today music videos are extremely popular and primarily for promotion purposes; with new technologies of the internet and sites such as ‘Vimeo’ and ‘Youtube’, music videos are easily accessible and are viewed by millions. TV channels such as MTV still continue to run and play music videos continuously to certain audiences that enjoy watching the narrative of the videos along with hearing the music.