The History of Music Videos

What is a music video?

A music video/song video is a short film mixing a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes.

Types of Music Video

Music videos use a varied range of styles of contemporary video making techniques, including animation, live action filming for staged/live performances, documentaries, concept and narrative/non-narrative approaches such as abstract film.

Unofficial, fan-made music videos ("bootleg" tapes) are typically made by synchronizing existing footage from other sources, such as television series or movies, with the song. A well-known example of an unofficial video is one made for Danger Mouse's illegal mash-up from his The Grey Album, of the Jay-Z track Encore with music sampled from The Beatles' White Album, in which concert footage of The Beatles is remixed with footage of Jay-Z and rap dancers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbXLp2z6xL4

In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired an electrician, George Thomas and numerous performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child".

Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. A magic lantern is  an early type of image projector retaining pictures on sheets of glass. Developed in the 17th century and commonly used for educational and entertainment purposes.

This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video.

History & Development

In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" (features, flicks or early film with a soundtrack)) many musical short films were produced. 

Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5e6RhQViwA

Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine.

Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons.

The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and especially Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3t5BmU3uYQ

The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theatres.

Talkies, Soundies and

shorts

BESSIE SMITH-ST.LOUIS

BLUES This is one of the earliest

examples of music videos that we are familiar with today. It was shown in theatres in 1932, however we are now able to access music videos almost anywhere now unlike before and this music video shows how much technology has changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVCqXRlXx4

Tony Bennett Released:1956 SONG: STRANGERS IN

PARADISE Tony's song "Stranger in

paradise" was filmed in Hyde Park, London and was played across UK and US television stations. Bennett later claimed that his music video was the very first. This was the first example of using music videos on TV, this would lead on to create channels like MTV and Top of the pops.

The Beatles SONG: A HARD DAY’S NIGHT Released: 1964 https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=70QfHtKdh_0

The crucial moment in the development of music videos was the Beatles "A hard days night", influencing the filming of music videos that all/many contemporary artists use today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, music videos filmed like short films and put in a Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in Frances.

The Jackson Five – the beginning of Music

Television https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Q80mk7bxE

SONG: I WANT YOU BACK Released: 1970 The 1970's saw the music video

change with more emphasis on just the artist singing. This style lead to music videos to the "Cross-Cutting" stage where the song would portray a story that accompanied the lyrics and "cross-cuts" to the artist singing it. However the key to this innovation was the editing process, dealing with more professional techniques like "Chroma-Key".

Chroma-Key A special effects / post-

production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues (chroma range).

The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the newscasting, motion picture and videogame industries.

Michael Jackson – MVs go mainstream

SONG: THRILLER Released: 1982 https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA

This video was the pioneer of the 'Storyline' video which has a plot, almost like a 'mini' movie. It contains sophisticated visuals and it took the music industry to another level. Now music videos were really being seen as promotion and made into high-budget productions.

A-ha SONG: TAKE ON ME Released: 1985 https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

The comic book/live-action combination is called rotoscoping and took 16 weeks to complete. This just shows how the song relies on this type of promotion, mainly because it was the only the form of marketing for a song in the 20th century.

Rotoscoping Rotoscoping is an animation technique

in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope. Although this device was eventually replaced by computers, the process is still referred to as rotoscoping.

In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

Britney Spears – Rise of the directors

SONG: BRITNEY SPEARS – SOMETIMES

Released:1999 https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0bPrt69rag

Music video meets the expectations of the pop genre and makes it appealing to mainstream society, especially young females (pre teens) because of bold and cutesy choice of colours and typical love/romance/crush narrative.

Iggy Azalea – easy access to watch MVs

IGGY AZALEA – WORK Released: 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_

zR6ROjoOX0 In the current music video era that we

live in today the adoption of the 'Sex Appeal' of females has dominated the music industry, rather than choosing the more traditional methods because they are less profitable

Music video were easy to access through, numerous music TV channels, social networks, websites, phone apps.