Music Video History

The first music video to be played was 12:01am on August 1st 1981.

MTV being the first 24-hour music video channel. The first video to be played was "video killed the radio star" by the Buggles. Mulcahy moved to the UK in the 1970's this is where he made music videos for successful British pop acts. The purpose of a music video is to promote the artist and the track. They are often brought out with hidden meanings they could be political like Katy Perry and Chained to The Rhythm or hold other social issues such as Plan B and She Said. Lily Allen also did a really effective video called Hard out here which was about how difficult it is to be a women in the music industry.  A music video is a message given to an audience to entertain and promote a track. It is a mix of both a song and imagery matching to produce a source of promotional or artistic purpose. It is rumored that Scream by Janet Jackson is one of the most expensive videos to ever be made. Alongside Guns and Roses- Estranged, Michael Jackson-Thriller and Madonna with Bedtime Story. The most watched music videos of all time on YouTube have been Gangnam Style, See you again Wiz Khalifa, Despacito, Sorry- Justin Bieber, Uptown Funk- Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift- Blank Space, Roar- Katy Perry and Maroon 5- Sugar.

Key conventions found in music video genres is they are divided into both technical and symbolic. Technical can be anything from the way in which the camera angles are, types of shots, diejetic, or non diejetic sounds, pace and style of editing. Whereas, symbolic techniques are through mise en scene, facial expression, gestures and poses things that you have to look beyond what you can see are often symbolic.

The beginning of music video history came around in in the 20's.  It came from Bessie Smith and was named St Louis Blues. It was released in 1929 and  appeared in theatures until 1932 it went on for a duration of 15 mins and was more like a small film rather than a music video. Followed by the next video release in the 1930's from Len Tye which was an experimentation of the 'Kaleidoscope and a colour box'. It was the first video to be made in colour aswell as St Louis Blues was made in black and white.

 

By the 1940's 'Fantasia' was released by Walt Disney it consisted of famous pieces of classical music. They had the frequent use of animated characters used in these videos and they were highly popular. Shortly followed in 1950/1960's were scopitone jukeboxes. You put money in and a song would be played too you with the music video. The scopitone was a cabinet that had a television loaded with 16mm film clips of popular music videos.

 By the 1960's came the introduction of the Beatles and the American band the Monkeys who became rival bands. The Beatles released Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane where they used reversed editing, domestic lighting and unusual camera angles which had no been seen before and was a move forward in the right direction when this came out in 1967. 

During 1975 Queen released Bohemain Rhapsady he shot this within a studio with lightening etc to enhance the music video it consisted of 6 minutes worth of content and promoted them as well as giving a performance. After this, high production values came in when Jackson 5 entered the music industry this is because they had the finance available to execute a hit music video from their million dollars they had available to create 'can you feel it' music video. This was hard to compete with and compare to previous artists because they were the first group to have such a large sum of money to play around with.

Top of the pops was then introduced and you would watch all acts then pick your favourite out of all of them for example Pans people. by 1981, MTV launched and the first video that was played on MTV was Buggles 'Video killed the radio star'. This is also the first music video channel that people could access music videos at any time they pleased on.  By the 1980s Michael Jackson was riding solo releasing Thriller and Beat it. Thriller had $500,000 to be spent solely on the video from John Landis showing the ever-growing improvements in both the quality of high performance technologies and theories.

David Bowe and Queen went onto bring out 'under pressure'.

Chart show in 1986 began to release various different music clips offering variation that had not been available before. Sledge Hammer began to do something unique in one of his videos as he uses tons of animation and makes it so a train is actually travelling through his mouth in the video. Even with all of these great music video releases not all of them was successful on the radio. For example Frankie goes to Hollywood- relax don't do it was actually banned from being played. Alongside Duranne Duranne Girls on Film for being too explicit and inappropriate.

This research i have done into the history of music videos will allow me to know what will work within my own music video and which will be deemed as inappropriate meaning i am less likely to make the same mistakes as other unsuccessful music videos have.