A brief history of Music Video part#2

1980's MAINSTREAM

In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and began an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. By the mid-1980s music video grew to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period EG: Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the appeal of their videos.

The development of contemporary music video was strongly affected by the adaptation of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use video recording and editing equipment, and the development of visual effects created with techniques such as image compositing (Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene.)

The arrival of high-quality color videotape recorders and portable video cameras enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film.

However, as the genre developed, music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video.

During the 1980s, music videos had become a necessity for most recording artists. In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos were even made in a non-representational form, in which the musical artist was not shown (rarely done as they are meant to promote the artist / band)

In 1983, one of the most successful, influential & iconic music videos of all time was released – being Michael Jackson's song "Thriller. The video set new standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film. The video for "Thriller” was very beneficial in getting music videos by African American artists played on MTV. Prior to Jackson's success, videos by African-American artists were rarely played on MTV.

In 1984, MTV launched the MTV Video Music Awards (later to be known as the VMA's) an annual awards event that would come to highlight MTV's importance in the music industry.In 1985, MTV launched the channel VH1 – video hits 1, which featured softer music, and was meant to cater to an older demographic than MTV

 Furthermore a key development in music videos was the launch of The Chart Show on the UK's Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many videos had on British TV at the time) without presenters. Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art computer graphics.

In 1986, Peter Gabriel's song "Sledgehammer" used special effects and animation techniques developed by British studio Aardman Animation. The video for "Sledgehammer" went go on to be a phenomenal success  and won nine MTV Video Music Awards. In 1988, the MTV show Yo! MTV Raps debuted which helped to bring hip hop music to a mass audience for the first time.