2. . What is Music
video?
Wikipedia defines a music as a short
film or video that accompanies a
complete piece of music, most
commonly a song . Modern music
videos were primarily made and
used as a marketing device intended
to promote the sale of music
recordings
3. An Early example
of a music video
The earliest example I could find was St
Louis Blue’s – Bessie Smith 1929 Blues
singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-
reel short film called Saint Louis Blues (
1929 ) featuring a dramatized
performance of the hit song. It was
shown in theatres until 1932.
4. 1950’s and 60’s developments
In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park,
London as his recording of Stranger in played, this film was distributed to and
played by UK and US television stations, leading Bennett to later claim he
made the first music video. According to the Internet Accuracy Project , disk
jockey -singer J.P ”The Big Bopper”; Richardson (d. 1959) was the first to coin
the phrase “rock video” Around 1960 the Scopitone , a visual jukebox, was
invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists,
such as Serge Gainsbourg , Françoise Hardy and Jacques Dutronc to
accompany their songs. Its use spread to other countries and similar machines
such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented.
5. 1950’s and 60’s cont…
The defining work in the development of the modern music video was The Beatles ' first
major motion picture, A Hard Day's Night in 1964 , directed by Richard Lester . The musical
segments in this film arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of today's music videos,
influencing a vast number of contemporary musicians, and countless subsequent pop and
rock group music videos. Although unashamedly based on A Hard Day's Night , the hugely
popular American TV series The Monkees was another important influence on the
development of the music video genre, with each episode including a number of specially-
made film segments that were created to accompany the various Monkees songs used in
the series. The Beatles took the genre to new heights with their groundbreaking films for
Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane made in early 1967 , which used techniques
borrowed from underground and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic
lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. Created at the height of the
psychedelic music period, these two landmark films are among the very first purpose-made
concept videos that attempt to show the song in an artful manner, rather than just creating
a film of an idealized performance
6. Modern Era
The key innovation in the development of the modern music
video was video recording and editing processes, along with
the development of a number of related effects such as
chroma-key. The advent of high-quality color videotape
recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the
DIY ethos of the New Wave era and this enabled many pop
acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in
comparison to the relatively high costs of using film.
However, as the genre developed music video directors
increasingly turned to 35mm film as the preferred medium,
while others mixed film and video. By the mid-1980s
releasing a music video to accompany a new single had
become standard, and acts like The Jackson's sought to gain
a commercial edge by creating lavish music videos with
million dollar budgets; most notable with the video for ”Can
You Feel It”
Can you feel it still image
7. Modern Era of Music Video 1970’s
In the UK the importance of Top of the Pops to promote a single
created an environment of innovation and competition amongst
bands and record labels as the show's producers placed strict limits
on the number of videos it would use - therefore a good video
would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see the video
again the following week. Queen 's Bohemian Rhapsody also started
a whole new era for using music videos as promos. American band
Devo were one of the first to create the early self-produced music
videos, including the pioneering compilation “The Truth About
Devolution”; directed by Chuck Statler, were also important (if
somewhat subversive) developments in the evolution of the genre
and these Devo video cassette releases were arguably among the
first true long-form video productions.
Bohemian Rhapsody still
image
8. 1980’s
1981- MTV is launched, the first video to be aired is Buggles ‘Video killed the Radio Star’,
David Bowie scored his first UK number one in nearly a decade thanks to director David
Mallets' eye catching promo for” Ashes to Ashes”. In the early to mid-1980s, artists started
to use more Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of the short film. A short film
is a music sophisticated effects in their videos, and added a storyline or plot to the music
video. Michael video that has a beginning, middle and end. He did this in a small way with
Billie Jean, directed by Steve Barron, then in a West Side Story style with director Bob
Giraldi's Beat It, but it wasn't until the 1984 release of the Thriller short film that he took the
music video format to another level. Top of the Pops was censorious in its approach to
video content, so another approach was for an act to produce a promo that would be
banned or edited and so use the resulting controversy and publicity to promote the release.
Early examples of this tactic were Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film and Frankie Goes to
Hollywood with;”Relax” directed by Bernard Rose & “White lines” by Grandmaster Flash
MTV Music videos would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music
marketing. Madonna , owed a great deal of her success to the skillful construction and
seductive appeal of her videos. Some academics have compared music videos to silent film,
and it is suggested that stars like Madonna have (often quite deliberately) constructed an
image that in many ways echoes the image of the great stars of the silent era such as Greta
Garbo . Although many see MTV as the start of a “golden era” of music videos and the
unparalleled success of a new art form in popular culture, others see it as hastening the
death of the true musical artist, because physical appeal is now critical to popularity to an
unprecedented degree.
Video killed the radio star
still image
9. Music Videos Today
In the information technology era, music videos now
approach the popularity of the songs themselves,
being sold in collections on video tape and DVD.
Enthusiasts of music videos sometimes watch them
muted purely for their aesthetic value. Instead of
watching the video for the music, (the basis for the
artform), the videos are appreciated for their visual
qualities, while viewers remain uninterested in the
audio portion of the performance. This is a normal
sociological reaction, some say, to the increasing
trend in the music business to focus on visual appeal
of artists, rather than the quality of the music. Critics
say that the corporate music managers, over the
course of logical and calculated business decisions,
have sought to capitalize on the sex appeal of
females in music videos rather than in choosing less
profitable musicianship-based music.
Who runs the world still image
