The history of music videos
Before the introduction of music videos. The creator of the
song would put images to go with the song to show how a live performance would
look. However in the 1920’s onwards animations were created called “Screen
songs” this allowed the audience to sing along with the song as it played.
When music videos first became known they were made into a
film so people would go to the cinema to watch the band or artist act and then
perform songs throughout the movie. An example of this is:
·
The Beetles featured
in a film named ‘Hard day’s night’
in 1964. This was described as a
“mock documentary”. This gave them a way of promoting their songs to a wider
audience. It meant the audience would pay to watch them in a movie. Therefore
giving them more publicity.
· Bob Dylan was one of
the first people to make a music video. The song realised was ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ in 1965. However this video was shot in
one edit and had no narrative. This is completely different to how videos are
filmed now. But back then the focus of the video was put on the understanding
of the lyrics. Hence why the lyrics shown in this video took up most of the
frame. The video was purposely filmed in black and white because it was
cheaper.
·
Queen were the
first band to create a Magnetic videotape with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in 1975. When it was first released it was
a big hit. With the introduction of MTV in 1981 their video became No.1 in the
charts and it stayed like this for a very long time. MTV made videos a promotional
thing and since then music videos have became an important part in the
production of a song.
· Michael
Jackson made his video ‘Thriller’
in 1982 into more of a short film.
Including a good performance and a narrative into the video. Throughout the
whole twelve-minute clip there are three levels of digesis. · This video was aired on TV, which was very popular
with the public.
·
Peter Gabriel’s
video for ‘Sledgehammer’ was
very effective as it challenge how video were created and viewed because it was
made by animation and stop motion. This gave a new way of making videos. This
quirky video also created an image of Peter as being “Cutting edge” as he did
not follow the conventions of how videos were made in that time.
·
Madonna in ‘Vogue’ 1990 tried to create a video
that would be remembered and liked by the audience and therefore throughout the
video made her self look like iconic figures such as Marilyn Monroe. She
created a good video by using imagery from films. Therefore putting on a good
performance.
·
Beyoncé with ‘single ladies’ was released in 2008.
This video is an example of what videos are like in the 21st
century. The focus in on the artist. It also shows that now artists are versatile
because they now can sing, act and dance. This whole video does not show Beyoncé
singing, it shows her dancing talents, taking the focus away from the lyrics which is very different to Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Values'. Therefore insinuating that in order to be a 'star' you need to have these talents.
These videos all show the development in music videos and how they transitioned from wanting the lyrics as the focus of the song to a performance and a narrative needing to be shown in order to entertain the audience.
Here is a timeline of all the videos mentioned in this blog post:
