History of music videos

History of Music videos

A music video is also seen as a short film or even a video that plays whilst a piece of music is playing, most commonly a song. Due to the music videos being classed as talking pictures, the early music videos were known as 'talkies'.

The 1950's and 60's:

Music videos were very popular in theatres, however became even more popular when 'promos' were introduced ' Promos' also known as promotional videos, were first introduced in 1956. However, there is some controversy with this video. When Tony Bennett walked through Hyde Park, London, whilst ' Strangers in Paradise' was played in the background. Once filmed, the video was shown in the UK and USA, with Tony stating he had created the first ever music video. The idea of a music video was then devolped when The Beatles created a video for their single, 'A Hard Day's Night' in 1964. With the understanding that thought and planning had gone into this video, it was labelled as a music video. Some features and teachniques of the video are now seen in some modern music videos. The beatles then furthed this creation by adding codes and convention into their music video, 'Penny Lane'.

The 1980's:

On 30th November 1982, a music video was released that changed the future of all music videos. Michael Jackson's ' Thriller' was published and released on TV. This was such a big moment there was a premiere on channel 4 showcasing the music video. This was the first video that was classed as a short film as well as telling a narrative. We can see that now music videos follow this and create a narrative to play whislt the song plays over the top.

The late 1920's and early 1930's:

Due to the music videos being classed as talking pictures, the early music videos were known as 'talkies'. One of the first music video to be published and regarded as a 'talkie' was St. Louis Blues in 1929. This video featured Bessie Smith, someone who is known heavily for being invokved in the first ever 'talkie'. However, another the Spooney Medlodies, a series of live action musical shorts produced Warner Brothers, also were very popular in the early 1930's. Although, the Spooney Melodies were fairly popular, they weren't as popular as St. Louis Blues. This 'talkie' was shown in theatres until 1932.

The 1970's:

In 1975, one of the most popular and influential music videos was released. Although, this was over 40 years ago, the bohemian rhapsody is still one of the biggest selling music videos of all time, selling 2.1 million copies. However, this was mainly because of the tv released around this date. Top of the Pops was a tv show on the BBC showcasing the latest music videos. If we look back to 1956 and Tony Bennett we can see that similar things were starting to happen when Tony's video was shown throught the UK and USA. This shows the devolpment of technologies within the music video as well as the technologies used to show these videos.

The 2000's:

Most music videos now follow this tradition of telling a story, however some artists now make their music video unsuitable for some audiences. This is because people then crave to see the video because they aren't allowed to. We see this with Rihanna and her song 'work', where she has created two videos, one of which allowed for all audiences and one of which only allowed for a certain audience.

What influence has this had on my planning?

Overall the impact has been that we need to encode a message into our music video and hopefully tell a story throughout the video. This is mainly down to the fact that in the last decade we have seen an increase in this idea. We have also seen an increase in the number of people uploading their music video to websites such as Youtube. Some artists do this so that more people can see the video, therefore once we have finished our final product then we will upload it to the internet.