Research: History of Music videos

History Of Music Videos

Modern day music videos are different to traditional music videos due to a difference in technology, equipment, what the audience expects, how artist like to portray themselves, ect.

Timeline of the history of music video's:

• 1929 - Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel  short film called 'Saint Louis Blues' displaying songs with moving images.

• 1940 - Disney, Fantasia: an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music.

• 1920 - 1940 - Many films were accompanied by sound, especially animations. These were not considered music videos, just basic editing of images to film/ musicals which was a big genre of film during this period.

• 1950 - 1960 - Tony Bennett is filmed walking through hype park, London for his song 'Stranger in Paradise', claims he made the first music video.

• 1964 - Beatles, Arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of todays music videos, influencing a vast number of contemporary musicians at the time to create similar moving images to accompany their music.

• 1966 - 1986 - 'The monkeys' was a TV show specially made film segment that was created to accompany their songs that was used in their TV series.

• 1966 - The birth of  'Top Of The Pops' used to promote singles so artists had to create competitive videos to complete for airtime.

•  1967 - Videos used techniques borrowed from film ideas. The starts of ' The Beatles - Pennylane'.

• 1975 - Queen - 'Bohemian Rhapsody' created to replace a live TV performance.

• 1970 - 1980 - The  key development of the modern music videos were video recording with editing processes. High quality video tape recorders and portable cameras enabled pop artists such as ' The Jacksons'.

• 1971 - MTV is launched. First music video aired was 'buggles - video killed the radio star'.

• 1984 - Michael Jackson - Thriller took music video format to another level.

Music videos have changed over time as there is now better technology so different effects and editing can be used and more ideas can be brought to life. For example Queens' Bohemian Rhapsody' had very basic editing and wasn't shot form a lot of angles, also the idea behind it. Today music videos such as Rihanna's 'we found love' displays a lot better editing, better cinematography and overall a more creative idea.

 Also, society on a whole has changed which means the audience expectations have changed. When the idea of music video was new the audience didn't have much expectations, however, now an audience expects more excitement and entertainment from a music video and expect different things from different artists.

conclusion: why is it important to know about the history of music videos and what ideas have you gathered?

It is important to know about the history of music videos so that we can be aware of how music videos and what they showcase and represent have changed as society has changed. This allows us to make comparisons between music videos and the effects that they have on society; for example, how the ideas music videos put forward (e.g alcohol), effects the behaviour of teenagers in society.
Looking at the history of music videos have also helped me to create my own idea of what I would like my music video to be like and I would like it to stand out and for my ideas to be very modern.