music video a brief history

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Music Video – a brief history

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Page 1: Music Video   A Brief History

Music Video – a brief history

Page 2: Music Video   A Brief History

What is Music video? A music video is 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.

Source: Wilkepedia

Page 3: Music Video   A Brief History

An Early example of a music video- St Louis Blue’s – Bessie Smith 1929Blues 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.

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Music videos are often called promotion videos or simply promos, due to the fact that they are usually promotional devices. Sometimes, music videos are termed short-form music videos to distinguish them from full length movies pertaining to music. In the 1980s, the term "rock video" was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse.

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The earliest music videos or music promos were filmed in the mid 1950’s, however, before then, as early as the 1920’s, films by animators such as Oskar Fischinger were accompanied by musical scores labeld ‘visual music’.

The early animated efforts of Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. 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.

The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns

and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.

Source: Wilkepedia

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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 Paradise" 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" [1]

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.

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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 series ran from 1966 to 1968.

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 "illustrate" the song in an artful manner, rather than just creating a film of an idealized performance.

in 1966 the clip of Bob Dylan performing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D A Pennebaker was much used. The clip's ironic portrayal of a performance and the seemingly random inclusion of a celebrity (Allen Ginsberg) in a non-performing role also became mainstays of the form. The clip has been much imitated.

Source: Wilkepedia

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Modern Era The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was, of course,

video recording and editing processes, along with the development of a number of related effects such as chroma-key. The advent of high-quality colour 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".

Source: Wilkepedia

Page 12: Music Video   A Brief History

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 by Devo, 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. Source: Wilkepedia

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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 sophisticated effects in their videos, and added a storyline or plot to the music video. Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of the short film. A short film is a music 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 way 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 censorous in it’s 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

A non-representational music video is one in which the musical artist is hardly shown. Because music videos are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are rare; an early 1980s example of this is Herbie Hancock’s Rock it!

Source: Wilkepedia

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MTV Music video 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 video 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 artform 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.

Source: Wilkepedia

Page 20: Music Video   A Brief History

Music Video 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.

Source: Wikipedia

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How Important are music video’s today?

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Music video history- timeline 1941: A new invention hits clubs and bars in the USA: The Panoram Soundie is a jukebox that plays short videoclips along with the music. 1956: Hollywood discovers the genre of music-centered films. A wave of rock'n'roll films begins (Rock Around the Clock, Don't Knock the Rock, Shake, Rattle and Rock, Rock Pretty Baby,

The Girl Can't Help It, and the famous Elvis Presley movies). Some of these films integrated musical performances into a story, others were simply revues. 1960: In France a re-invention of the Soundie, the Scopitone, gains limited success. 1962: British Television invents a new form of music television. Shows like Top Of The Pops, Ready! Steady! Go! and Oh, Boy started as band vehicles and became huge hits. 1964: The US-Television market adapts the format. Hullabaloo is one of the first US shows of this kind, followed by Shindig! (NBC) and American Bandstand; The Beatles star in

A Hard Day's Night 1966: The first conceptual promos are aired, for the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" and "Rain". Early in 1967, even more ambitious videos are released for "Penny Lane" and "

Strawberry Fields Forever". 1968: The Rolling Stones collaborate with Jean-Luc Goddard on Sympathy for the Devil 1970: The record industry discovers these TV-Shows as a great opportunity to promote their artists. They focus on producing short "Promos", early music videos which started to replace the live

performance of the artist on the TV-stage. 1975: "Bohemian Rhapsody" a groundbreaking video released by Queen marked the beginning of the video era and set the language for the modern music video. 1979: Devo releases "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Suprise", which is the first music video to include computer animation as well as the first to include traditional animation. 1980: "Ashes to Ashes" which is considered as a groundbreaking video is released by David Bowie. 1981: MTV, the first 24-hour satellite music channel, launches. Initially few cable TV operators carried it, but it rapidly became a major hit and cultural icon. 1981: Michael Nesmith wins the first ever music video Grammy with Elephant Parts. 1983: Night Tracks debuted on Superstation WTBS (later known as TBS) with up to 14 hours of music videos each weekend by 1985. This allowed nearly all U.S. households with Cable TV to

view music videos regularly as MTV still wasn't as widely available at this point in time compared to WTBS. 1983: Friday Night Videos debuted on the NBC television network, allowing nearly all U.S. households to view music videos regularly. 1984: Michael Jackson's short film Thriller is released, changing the concept of music videos forever. The Making of Thriller home video was also released in 1984. It was the first ever video

about the making of a music video. 1986: "Sledgehammer", the groundbreaking video from Peter Gabriel, is first shown. 1989: MTV renames its "Video Vanguard Award" to the "Michael Jackson Vanguard Award" in honor of Michael Jackson for his contributions to the art of music video. 1989: Madonna's controversial video for Like a Prayer is released. 1991: Nirvana release the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video changing the MTV platform from glam rock to alternative rock, and catapulting grunge and Kurt Cobain into the American and Worldwide

mainstream. 1992: MTV begins to credit music video directors. 1992: Guns N' Roses's groundbreaking video for "November Rain" is released and remains as one of the costliest ever produced. 1996: Pop-up Video is first aired on VH1. 1996: M2 is launched as a 24-hour music video channel, as MTV has largely replaced videos with other content. 1999: M2 is renamed to MTV2. 2002: MTV Hits is launched as MTV2 is gradually showing fewer music videos. 2006: The Norwegian unsigned band Rektor makes the worlds first playable videogame music video game .http://www.rektor.no

Source: Wilkipedia

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