History Of The Music Video

To begin my research, I have looked at some of the earliest music videos and how they came about. I used Wikipedia for my research on the history of music videos.

In 1926, many musical short films were produced. Warner Brothers produced Vitaphone shorts, which featured bands, singers and dancers. A series called Spooney Melodies was the first true musical video series, with shorts lasting for around six minutes, featuring animations combined with footage of the performer singing the song. This series can arguably be considered to be the earliest music videos.

The early animated films by Walt Disney were also built around music. Silly Symphonies were produced from 1929 until 1939 and featured such well known characters as Donald Duck who went on to have their own successful cartoon series.

Moving on, the idea of music videos developed further in the 60's when the Scopitone was invented in France. The Scopitone was a visual jukebox which allowed artists to accompany their songs with a short film. The success of this machine resulted in similar devices being invented in other countries, such as the Cinebox in Italy and the Color-Sonic in the USA.

In 1964, Richard Lester directed A Hard Days Night, The Beatles first film which featured a mixture of dialogue and musical sequences. These musical sequences formed the basic templates on which many subsequent music videos were modelled. Other artists followed in the Beatles footsteps after their success. Don't Look Back for example, is a documentary style film on Bob Dylan's tour of England in 1965. A famous musical sequence from this film is the Subterranean Homesick Blues performance, in which Bob Dylan holds up cards featuring some of the lyrics of the song and flips through them whilst engaging with his audience by staring at the camera. Intentional mistakes are made in part of the song which provide the sequence with humour. This cue card idea has featured in many other music videos.

Music television began in 1974, with Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds being launched. These were significant in developing and popularizing the music video industry in Australia as well as other countries. It also established the importance of these videos as a means of promoting new bands as well as new releases from established acts. In the late 70's, Top Of The Pops emerged on UK television. The BBC had strict regulations on the number of 'outsourced' music videos that the show could use. A good video would therefore increase a song's sales as the viewers hoped to see it again the following week.

In the 80's, music videos went mainstream. In 1981, MTV was launched, bringing music to television 24 hours a day. With this new outlet, the music video grew to play a central role in music marketing. Many bands of this era owe a great deal of their success to the construction and seductive appeal of their music videos. In 1983, the most successful and influential video of all time was released - Michael Jackson's Thriller. The nearly 14 minute long video cost $500,000 to produce and set new standards for music video production.

In 1992, MTV began listing directors names with the music videos along with the artist and song credits. Directors such as Spike Jonze, Hype Williams and Mark Romanek all got their start in the industry around this time. Each director brought a unique style to their videos, and some of these directors went on to produce their own feature films. Romanek directed Michael and Janet Jackson's Scream in 1995 which cost $7 million to make, and remains the most expensive music video to date.

In 2005, the internet began showing music videos. The videos were initially recorded from television shows and digitised in order to be viewable over the internet. YouTube was launched in 2005 which allowed internet users to be able to access online videos faster and more easily. Other websites followed YouTube's example, such as Myspace, using similar video technology. Such websites had a great effect on the viewing of music videos, with some artists gaining success as a result of their videos being seen mostly or entirely online. OK Go became famous with two of their music videos, A Million Ways and Here It Goes Again, both of which became well known online.

The Brief

Welcome to my blog! Here, I will record everything I do for my A2 Media Studies coursework. Below is the brief I have chosen to take.

A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• A website homepage for the band.
• A cover for its release on CD or DVD.
• A magazine advertisement for the CD or DVD.

The two options I have chosen from this list are the DVD cover and the magazine advertisement. But first, I shall be focusing on the main task of the music promo video.