The evolution of music video production, technologies and the industry have progressed through several stages since the first signs of the music/industry started in the mid 1800’s; Illustrated songs, Talkies, Soundies, Musical Shorts, Musical Film, Extended narrative Videos and Music Videos.
In 1894, Edward Marks and Joe Stern, Music publishers for ‘Sheet Music’ hired an electrician and several performers to promote their song ‘The Little Lost Child’. George Thomas, projected several stages of still images onto a screen by using a magic lantern to create a ‘live’ playing effect. This was the first step towards music production, as illustrated songs then developed into Musical Short Films, also known as talkies, in the mid 1920’s, which were often six minutes long. They featured vocalists, bands, and dancers. The first example of this is Spooney Melodies, released in 1930, which is known as the first ‘Musical Video Series.’
Music in the 30’s was not a part of a large industry, artists didn’t have a strong fan-base, although records were produced and consumed. The music industry began to come to life during the development of narrative films in the 50’swith videos such as Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ in 1955. One of the most influential artists of Music as a phenomenon was Elvis, who played a character in his narrative videos, and became a huge musical success, influencing the start of Rock ‘n’ Roll as a global genre, in the late 50s/ Early 60s.
A large development to the music industry was the start of Radio 1 in 1967. Radio 1 became a milestone in the development of music videos, (along with the start of MTV in 1981) as they created a base for audiences to hear new music and hugely benefited artists in the promotion of their music releases. The 60’s become one of the most influential periods to the music industry, with the start of Rock n Roll, Radio stations, and significantly the development of manufactured pop stars. The music industry became controlled, as artists were no longer writing their own songs, and being manufactured by professionals. They were used as the ‘image’ of the music and only performed the music produced for them. This was to create artist that ‘fitted’ with the genres that were most popular top the industry at the time. This created the first real signs of a fan-base following. The largest indicator of this, in the 1960’s was The Beatles, who became a global phenomenon, with mass following. This meant their narrative films were heavily pressured to be trend setting, influencing the importance of narrative films for promotion of songs.
As a band that were not manufactured or controlled, The Beatles wrote and produced all their own music, they also broke the conventions of narrative performance films as they chose not to perform as a character, like artists such as Elvis did, but instead played themselves as performers, in films such as ‘A hard day’s night’.
This broke the barriers between artists and audiences as fans could relate to them, and created a direct relationship between the two institutions, and the Beatles became focused don targeting and appealing to a large Teenage based audience. As they gathered global successful, their narrative performance films began being showed in cinema screenings as concerts were not frequent and many people could not get to see them perform live, and therefor relied on their films.
By the late 1960’s, colour began being used as a feature in music films. The Beatles, having had massive success could afford to film in colour and filmed their narrative 1965 narrative performance video ‘help’ in colour. Although the film was performance base like the Beatles always did, there was camera editing, a lack of continuity editing and a montage feature was used to make thee film advanced and slightly ‘unrealistic’/ abstract effect.
The technicality of editing in the short music films became more advanced with elements of abstract editing and concepts. As the 70’s came around, music videos further revolved with the use of lighting effects. David Bowie’s video in 1972 used red lighting and on –screen effects to create a ‘futuristic’ theme to the video and song.
In 1975, Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ spent 9 weeks at number 1, as has been classed as the first real and successful Music Video. They fitted an operatic theme in the song with the video, with the use of lighting, close up shots, smoke, lower angles to make them appear powerful and overlapping/fading scenes.
Taking a further leap, the 1980’s saw the global success of bands such as ‘Wham’, who introduced the concept of narcissism and voyeurism, and the image of a’ million dollar lifestyle’ all of which were portrayed in ‘Club Tropicana’, influencing more music videos to promote the ‘Hollywood lifestyle’.
By the time of the late 80’’s the videos had become significantly important, if not more important than the song to the success of the artists, as it became more clear how global success was achieved through video promotion, and artists became reliant on their music videos.
In the 90’s however, music videos began breaking the rules of ‘safe’ videos and sexuality and religious opinions and beliefs were portrayed by the artists. An example of this is George Michaels ‘Sleighhammer’ in 1986 and REM’s ‘Losing my religion’ in the early 90’s.
As music videos moved into the 21st century and pop/ r&b music became ‘the’ popular genre, the technologies for creating advanced and technical videos became more accessible and special effects (slow motion, swipe screens, advanced lighting effects, etc.) were used by the majority of artists. By this point, music videos were being played no longer on only MTV, but several other music television channels - throughout the days, which began to make music videos heavily influential to the global success of the artists and the overall chart positions/success of the songs.
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