History of Music Videos

By Larelle Benjamin-Forrester

18941894 • 1894 – George Thomas, an electrician and many others were hired to promote sales of the song ‘The Little Lost Child’ by sheet music publisher Joe Stern and Edward B. Marks.

• The illustrated song was the first step towards music videos and would later become a popular type of entertainment. He created this by projecting a sequence of still images on a screen which was synchronized to live performances, using a magic lantern. A magic lantern is one of the earlier types of image projectors that was developed in the 17th century.

19261926 • In 1926, sound films with incorporated synchronized dialogue came about. These were called ‘talking picture’ better known as ‘talkies’ (among people of the early 1930s) which resulted in numerous musical short films being produced.

• They were exclusively ‘shorts’ which were played in cinemas before the feature film and were around 6 minutes long.

• Example: ‘St Louis Blues’ (1929) was a video that ran in cinemas till 1932 with Blues singer Bessie Smith appearing in it.

1920s-1930s 1920s-1930s CartoonsCartoons

• Screen Songs is a series of sing along shorts that were are a continuation of the earlier Fleischer series ‘Song Car-Tunes'. It was introduced in 1929 by animation artist Max Fleischer.

• It took popular songs of the day and added a "bouncing ball" following the lyrics in order to encourage audience sing longs. This is similar to what you would see on a modern karaoke machine and is still used today by people such as ‘High School Musical’ and ‘That’s So Raven’ for younger audiences.

• Popular musicians performed their hit songs on camera in live action sections during cartoons of the early 1930s. Films that featured this were Walt Disney’s animated Fantasia and Silly symphonies (shorts) which were built around music. They both had interpretations of classical pieces.

CartoonsCartoons

Cartoons such as ‘Merrie Melodies’ and ‘Looney Tunes’ by Warner Brothers were originally formed around

specific songs from upcoming Warner Brother musical films such as the Jazz Singer (1927).

1930 to 1970 1930 to 1970 The Influence of Musical FilmsThe Influence of Musical Films

• Music films was another item that came before music videos which is why it is so important and influential. As a result, classic Hollywood musicals from 1930s to the 1970s have been imitated.

These consist of:• Daddy Long Legs,

1955• Damn Yankees, 1958• Pennies from Heaven,

1981

Music & TelevisionMusic & Television• The term ‘music video’ was

invented by disk jockey-singer J.P. “The Big Popper” Richardson.

• Eventually these were distributed to and played by the US and UK television stations. One example of this is Tony Bennett’s recording ‘Stranger in Paradise’ (1953) which he played whilst being filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. This song began his career as an international artist.

• As television grew and became more popular, it allowed new stars to be exposed that before wouldn’t have due to Hollywood, normally requiring established acts. This gave more people a better opportunity to be successful and attract an audience to the box office – much like proven acts would have.

The Beatles The Beatles (1964)(1964)

The Beatles was one of the most commercially successful and significantly praised acts in the history of popular music. The English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960.

The Beatles starred in their first feature film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in 1964. It was directed by Richard Lester and shot in black and white. It contained:

1. A loosely structured musical composition of free/improvisatory nature2. Distribute musical sequences with comedic and dialogue ones3. A sequence with furnished basic templates• It was also a direct model for the Monkees (successful US TV series) which consisted

of similar film segments that were created to accompany various Monkees songs.In contrast, the 1965 feature ‘Help’ was filmed in London as well as on international

locations. It was also in colour except from the title track sequence that was filmed in black and white. Help contained the following features:

1. Contrasting close ups and long shots2. Unusual shots and angles3. Rhythmic cross-cutting4. And a shot whereby it shows both a sharp focus in the background and a completely

out of focus figure in the backgroundOverall, there second feature was very extravagant and had been really developed from

their first feature, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

Promotional Clips Promotional Clips (1965-1967)(1965-1967) • In 1965, The Beatles started making

promotional clips (filmed inserts) in order to promote their record releases without being present.

• This would be distributed and broadcasted in other countries (mainly the USA). In the UK, many promotional clips were aired on ’Top of the Pops’.

• Later examples of promotional clips were in colour. Those made in early 1967 such as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were directed by Peter Goldman and took promotional film format to a whole new height. The advanced techniques used (and added in post production) included:

• Dramatic lighting• Colour filtering• Reversed film and slow motion• Unusual camera angles and shots

These were borrowed from underground and Avant Garde Film. These studio masterpieces, were impossible to be performed live by the group so instead their psychedelic mini films portrayed the films in a generalized way - rather than imitating the appearance of the performance.

Another Promotional ClipAnother Promotional Clip

• Bob Dylan ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ was a monochrome clip, filmed by D. A. Pennebaker in 1966. This was a technique whereby it displayed images in black and white or in varying tones of one colour only.

• Filmed inserts at this time, were produced by UK artists and so could therefore be screened on TV when the artist was unable to appear live.

• He deliberately avoided imitating performances or presenting a narrative which is why he showing key words from the song lyrics.

Late 1970s - Top of the PopsLate 1970s - Top of the Pops

1964 - Top of the Pops was a British music chart television programme. It began playing music videos in the late 1970s however, they limited the amount of videos they could use. This effectively, would make viewers want to see the video

again and in the long run, increase song sales.

Promo VideosPromo VideosPromo videos are videos made in

order to promote the artist. Two very successful promo videos are:

• David Bowie – Ashes to Ashes• Madness

• Ashes to ashes was directed by David Mallet in 1980 and was Bowie’s first UK number one.

• Madness constructed their clips as ‘micro-comedic’ short films that were shot on 16mm and 35mm.

• 1975: The promo video for Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is notable for being entirely edited and shot on videotape. It was made by Bruce Gowers and shown on Top of the Pops.

1980s - MTV1980s - MTV• MTV was launched on 1st August

1981 at 12.01am with the words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll’.

• It showed footage of the launch of Apollo 11 as well as the first space shuttle launch countdown with John Lack’s voice spoken over it.

• The original MTV theme song was played after with numerous photos of Apollo 11 landing with the flag featuring MTV’’s logo changing various colours, textures and designs.

• This was used as excessive pride by MTV producers Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman. They associated MTV with the most famous moment in world TV history.

• Its launch began an era of 24/7 music on television and aired ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. By the mid 80s music videos would grow to play a dominant role in popular music marketing.

Important Acts of this period were:

1. Duran2. Madonna3. Michael Jackson4. Bon Jovi5. Prince

1980s Improvements/Developments1980s Improvements/DevelopmentsIn the development of the modern music videos, there were two key improvements

which was:• Video recording and editing equipment• Visual effects• This was very beneficial as the video recording and editing equipment, were

both easy to use and inexpensive. The arrival of high-quality colour portable video cameras and videotape recorders resulted in promotional videos for pop acts to be produced cheaply and quickly. Whereas, film was very cost effective. Some however, did continue to mix film and video, whilst others preferred using 35mm film – throughout the development of the field.

1983 – Michael Jackson – Thriller was released on 30th November 1982 and with it came a 14 minute long video that cost $500,000 to film. It was very successful as well as influential and set new standards for production. Videos such as this and Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Beat It’ influenced MTV to play videos by African Americans. However, this would have been rare when MTV had just launched as it was primarily a rock music orientated channel.

Successful Videos• 1985: Dire Straits – Money for Nothing: Good use of computer animation made

it an international hit• 1986: Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer: Good use of animation and special effects

techniques made it a phenomenal success.

1980s Improvements 1980s Improvements & Developments& Developments

The development of music videos continued as directors alongside music artists:

• Used more sophisticated effects• Mixed film and video• Included a storyline and plot• Looked at the form and style of the

genre in depth

There was also some non representational form videos whereby the music artist was not shown however these were rare as the video was intentionally made to promote the artist.

Examples of these are: • Queen – Under Pressure• Duran Duran – The Chauffeur• George Michael – Freedom

1990s - MTV1990s - MTVThe early 90s showed MTV in a different light as they

played a range of music that brought upon new forms of music video that were artistic, creative, amusing and technically accomplished compared to those in the 80s.

The music varied from:• R‘n’B groups – Boyz II Men & Bell Biv Divoe• Metal and Hard rock acts – Guns ‘N’ Roses, Metallica

& Nirvana• Pop singers – New Kids on the Block, Michael

Jackson & MadonnaAs well as introducing rappers MC Hammer and Vanilla

Ice• 1991-2001 – Napster – a peer to peer file sharing

service which allowed people to share their video files.

• 1992 – Film Directors got their start by MTV listing their names at the bottom of the credits thanks to the pressure from the MVPA.

• 1997 – The website iFilm launched.

20002000 • By 2000, non representational form videos were very common.

• Mid 2000 – MTV alongside its sister channels no longer showed music videos as they thought reality television shows were more popular with their audience.

• 2005 – The Launch of YouTube made viewing videos faster and easier. Similar technologies were used on other websites such as MySpace, Facebook and Google Video. This was beneficial to many artists as they became very successful through all the views.

• Example: Soulja Boy – Crank That & OK Go! – Here it goes again

2010/20112010/2011

As YouTube became an international success, many artists videos became an even bigger success from a large amount of views.

• 2010 – Lady Gaga – Bad Romance was the most viewed on YouTube with 130 million views which increased by early 2011 to over 350 million views

• 2011 – This record was however broken to, Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ that received over 500 million views.