The history of music videos

The Beginning

1894

2 sheet music publishers named Edward B. Marks and Joe stern hired an electrician by the name of George Thomas. They did this to promote sales of one of their songs called ‘The Little Lost Child’ using a piece of equipment call a magic lantern which was an early form of an image projector,  they projected still images in a sequence to a live performance, this became one of the first steps to the music video

1926

This saw the introduction of ‘talkies’ which were short musical films, one of the main products used to do this was the Vitaphone produced my warner bros. this featured many bands, vocalists, dancers and sing along cartoons created by max Fleischer which was so audiences could sing along with the songs as it was on.

this was the year the Vitaphone was also developed by Warner brothers, which featured many bands, vocalists and dancers.

1930’s

During the 1930’s early animation films featured popular musicians preforming their hit songs on-camera in live action segments. Animated films by Walt Disney such as fantasia also featured interpretations of classical pieces which were built around music.

1940’s

Musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some in which were even added into feature films such as ‘Lookout Sister’. This is now known as one of the closest ancestors of the music video

1950’s

In the 1950’s the Scopitone was introduced. This became the first ‘visual jukebox’ it had a small screen that showed performances of the artists playing the song synced with the track. The first one was produced in France and many French artist recorded short sequences of video to be played.

here is a video of a clip from a scopitone, which is shown twice one with colour correction to show what it would have looked like then and now

1960’s

In the early 1960’s Manny Pittson began prerecording the music audio, went on location and shot various different visuals and lip syncing, then edited the audio and video together, most music numbers where shot on stage but this one was created to add variety, this was all done for the Canadian show Singalong Jubilee

In 1964 The Beatles starred in their first feature film known as ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. The opening sequence so the film was them running away from fans while the song ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ This became known as one of the first ever music videos and sparked a hole era of music videos in the same style. They stared to create more clips like this to distribute to other countries so they didn’t have to show up in person.

The next big video to spark the craze was Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues promotional video film for his lasted released single at the time, this video features Bob standing in an alley way with cue cards with the lyrics of his song, dropping them in sequence to the lyrics when they are played.

The rolling stones appeared in many promotional clips in the 1960’s, in 1966 two videos where directed by peter whitehead for their single ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’

1970’s

In the 1970’s more and more music videos where being filmed and it was starting to become a more popular thing. Paul Drane, who was the original director for the Australian TV show Countdown, directed several memorable videos including AC/DC hits ‘its A Long Way to the Top’ And ‘Jailbreak’. After moving to the UK he was able to create his landmark video The Buggles ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, which became his first music video to be played on MTV in 1981.

The Top of the Pops also was aired in the 1970’s which began playing music videos in the late 1970s

In 1975 the band Queen released their music video for their song Bohemian Rhapsody to be aired on top of the pops this song started a new era for music videos as they started to become increasingly popular.

1980’s

In 1981 the U.S. video channel MTV was launched, the first music video aired was The Buggles Video killed the Radio Star and was the beginning of the era for 24 Hour music on TV. In the mid 1980’s MTV played a big part in the marketing of music through music videos, many important acts first came to light through MTV like Adam and the Ants and Madonna. They owed a great deal of their fame to MTV

During this time, Michael Jackson was trying to redefine music videos with the idea of a short film, he did this with both Billie jean and beat it, but the idea only took off on the release of the thriller video, which at the time was the most expensive music video ever created, and cost £1m.

1990’s

In the 90’s MTV began assigning directors to artist in the song credits showing the importance that music videos had become a medium that artists would become famous from. This decade is known as the rise of the directors.

Present day

Music videos today are an almost must have, all artist either successful or not will have some kind of music video, and all different types of genre and the types of music video e it narrative, performance of conceptual, all play a role in promoting the band.

Peace – Blookshake - performance

Linkin Park – in the end – conceptual                   

arctic monkeys – Leave before the lights come on - Narrative