History of the Music Video

The History of the Music Video



Music videos have become an absolute staple within the industry, with a good deal of major singles now getting videos to promote them. While music videos became popular and started becoming creative around the 60's-70s, music videos can be traced back all the way to the 1920's.

 

At the end of the 20's and beginning of the 30's motion picture with sound was a new and exciting prospect. The films being shown or 'Talkies' as they were known became increasingly popular and people decided to apitalise on the idea. Many short films were produced around the era, often showing a band playing a well known song to a musical track a few were shown with subtitles of the lyrics and audiences were encouraged to sing along, or 'Follow the bouncing ball;' essentially creating an early form of karaoke for large audiences. Following these Disney decided to cut famous bands at the time into live-action sequences of their cartoons to promote both the band and them selves; inadvertantly creating an early form of music promo. This is where the concept for 'Fantasia' came from, incorperating many classical pieces into a feature length film.

 

 Another important precursor to the music video were musical films. Derived from muscal on the west end and broadway these film adaptations served to show some of the capabilities of singing and choreography on film and how shots could be edited and sequenced together in time to create a synergetic bond between the visual and audio sides of the video. Notable musical films include 'The Sound of Music' and 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend'. These early movie's influences can be seen in many music videos of the 20th century, for example the dance fight scenes in Michael Jackson's 'Bad' were influenced directly by 'West Side Story' from 1957.

 

By the late 50's amachine called a 'Scopitone' was invented. These were essentially jukeboxes with a screen to play a 16mm reel whilst playing a musical track to accompany it. These machines were fitted it bars and nightclubs and became fairly popular, despite their bulky, arcade machinelike presence.

It was around the 50's and 60's, after the concept of music videos had arisen and had been established as a workable medium that music promotional videos started cropping up. The Beatle's  1964 track 'Hard Day's Night' was one of the first aired music promo's, featuring a full, edited film with many comedic elements, creating it's own theme, setting and story. This was completely groundbreaking as almost all videos around the time (Such as The Rolling Stones' 'Paint it black') were simply of the band performing. This tongue in cheek style of video opened the floodgates into the possibilities of music videos. Leading to one of The Beatle's biggest and most well known videos 'Strawberry fields forever' which featured many avant-garde film making editing techniques such as reversing the shot, slow motion, and tinting.

 

 

 

In 1974 Australian television owners saw the airing of the show 'Countdown' not the literature based show that we know and love but a showcase of music videos popular at the time, essentially a pre-alpha of MTV. This Outback exclusive show was unique in it's nature and became exceptionally popular, even changing what radio host's played on air because of the increased saturation of new bands that were popular. Countodwn was, without a doubt the show that revealed to the world that music videos had a lot of money as a business and had a lot of potential. Countdown was without a doubt, the cause of MTV.

 

It was during the 80's that music videos really hit the mainstream audience. A band was no longer a band unless they had a music video under their belt. INstead of the music video purely being a promo for the song the two became synergetic. The video advertised the song and the song advertised the video, because some had immense effort in both. No better song from the 80's encapsulates this that AHA's 'Take On Me', using some of the most creative film making methods of the era to create one of the most memorable videos ever.

 

The video tells a complete (albeit cheesy) story and  used a technique called rotoscoping (Whereby animator trace over live footage, frame by frame) to produce a unique look that defined the song. This was one of the first instances where the video was equally as memorable as the video, but in essence, it's a glorified 'strawberry fields forever' using modern editing techniques to wow the audience. Nonetheless no one can deny that this is a staple music video of its time period.

The 90's then followed suit, delivering some exceptionally creative music videos, but in different ways. Intertextuality started becoming a point for comedic videos to be born from. Rock bands and Pop Punk bands started taking full advantage of this, with many bands parodying other bands or films. The most notable (and example rich) video is easily Blink-182' 'All The Small Things' literally every shot pays homage to another music promo or film around that time. Ironically the music video is remembered more than some of the sources it parodies from.

 

 And finally the 2000's rolled around. Cencorship had been growing more and more lax over the past 40 years and it was really starting to show. Nudity and violence was becoming much more common in videos (German band Rammstein going as far as releasing a promo composed entirely of pornographic clips) and it was definitely showing on a day to day basis. Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' seeked to recreate the Thriller experience with a 9 minute long, fully directed music video that in itself, stand completely seperate from the original song. The video sparked some controversy due to Lady Gaga herself being almost entirely nude in some shots, homosexual content and depiction of homicide. Heavy content considering the song is about not getting phone reception in a club. Nonetheless many consider Lady Gaga a modern day Madonna, seeing as she's always puching the limits and testing what is ok to get away with on television.

 

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