MUSIC VIDEO A BRIEF HISTORY
*In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child". They Used a magic lantern, and Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This was to become an extremely popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song which would later evolve and develop into what we now know as the music video.
The phonoscène era (From 1902 until 1917)
The "singing pictures"
The phonoscène was a forerunner of sound film. It used a combination of chronophone sound recording and chronograph film shot + with actors lip-synching to the sound recording. The recording and film were synchronised by a mechanism patented by Léon Gaumont in 1902. The first phonoscènes were presented by Gaumont in 1902 in France.
Talkies, soundies, and shorts (1926-1959)
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" which were musical short films came about. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Spooney Melodies produced in 1930 was the first true musical video series. Shorts were typically six minutes in duration, and featured Art Deco-style animations (It is an eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. The style is often characterized by rich colours, bold geometric shapes, and lavish ornamentation.) and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing.
Next came the introduction of a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited their audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball" (similar to karaoke songs). Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments while the cartoons were playing. The early Disney films (such as Fantasia) often featured several interpretations of classical pieces and were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons were also initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films.
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues (1929) which featured a dramatised performance of ther hit song. Many other musicians appeared in similar short pieces around this time.
Later, in the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film Lookout Sister. These were seen as "ancestors" of music video.
Another premature form of music video were one-song films called "promotional clips" made in the 1940s for the visual jukeboxes. These were short films of musical selections -usually just a pop band on a bandstand,. Thousands of "soundies" were made (mainly of jazz musicians, torch singers, comedians, and dancers). The soundie put the music in the forefront; rather than the action of a film.
Musical films were another precursor to the modern music video.
(In relation to intertextuality in music videos many contemporary pieces have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals EG: Madonna's "Material Girl" which was modelled on "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Additionally mant of Michael Jackson's videos have been influenced by the choreography used in many classic Hollywood musicals. For instance "Thriller" and "Bad" which were influenced by the dance style "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.
EG: Singing in the rain, Calamity Jane, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Wizard of Oz.
Visual innovation (1960–1967)
In 1961 Ozzie Nelson directed and edited the video of "Travelin' Man" by his son Ricky Nelson. It featured images of various parts of the world. In 1964, Kenneth Anger's experimental short film, Scorpio Rising used popular songs instead of dialog.
In 1961, for Canadian show Singalong Jubilee, Manny Pittson began pre-recording the music audio, went on-location and taped various visuals with the musicians lip-synching, then edited the audio and video together. Most music numbers were taped in-studio on stage, and the location shoot "videos" were to add variety.
One of the earliest Videos of a Top 40 hit, was Jan & Dean's "Surf City", produced in Summer 1963. It’s single release reached Number One nationally in July.
Another early performance clip was The Animals's 1964 hit "House Of The Rising Sun". It was made as a high-quality colour clip and was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set; with the group lip-synching.
In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night,. Which was shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary. It was a loosely structured musical fantasia (fantasy) interspersing comedic and dialogue sequences with musical ones. The musical sequences can now be appreciated as the basic templates on which modern day subsequent music videos have been modeled. They were the direct model for the successful US TV series The Monkees (1966–1968) which consisted of film segments that were created to accompany various Monkees songs.
The Beatles' second feature Help! (1965) was a much more extravagant. It was filmed in colour in London and on international locations. It fitted musical sequences into a fantasy adventure in which the group is pursued through a series of locales fixed on recovering a sacred ring which has come into Ringo Stars possession. The title track sequence, filmed in black-and-white, is arguably one of the key archetypes of the modern performance-style music video. The video employs:
rhythmic cross-cutting
contrasting long shots
close-ups
unusual shots and camera angles (eg playing around with the focus of the piece)
In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips (then known as "filmed inserts" for distribution and broadcast in other countries ( mainly the USA in order promote their record releases without having to make personal appearances). In 1965 (in Twickenham Film Studios), The Beatles videotaped 10 black & white promo films –
We Can Work It Out" (3 Versions),
"Day Tripper" (3 Versions)
"Help!" (1 Version)
"Ticket To Ride" (1 Version)
"I Feel Fine" (2 Versions which were never aired).
One version each of the first two songs were aired on "Hullabaloo" (Hullabaloo is an American musical variety series that ran on NBC from January 12, 1965 through August 29, 1966.) in the US in 1966.
Many clips were aired on "Top of the Pops" (is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC) in the UK, and two were aired on "Thank Your Lucky Stars." (a British television pop music show made by ABC Television, and broadcast on ITV from 1961 to 1966). At the same time, The Byrds (An American Rock Band formed in 1964) began using the same strategy to promote their singles in the UK. By the end of The Beatles tours in late 1966, their promotional films had become much more highly sophisticated. They filmed x2 sets of colour promotional clips for their single "Rain"/"Paperback Writer". The studio clips were straightforward performance films shot at Abbey Road Studios on 19 May, especially for broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show and prefaced by a spoken introduction from Ringo. ( presented in the interextual piece by Outkast called ‘Hey Ya’)
The location clips are more elaborate and used vibrant colour footage shots on location in the grounds of Chiswick House in London.Both were notable for their use of hand-held camera work, rhythmic editing, slow motion shots and reversed film. The "Paperback Writer" clip is more conventional, with Lennon, McCartney and Harrison lip-synching and miming playing their. The "Rain" clip marked a major advance in stylistic terms; it uses some colour shots and also intercut with monochrome reductions (b&w/ greyscale) of the Abbey Road studio footage. It one of the first examples of this device in music video.
Most notably, apart from a few brief shots close-ups of Lennon lip-synching and a shot of the group under a tree miming playing their instruments the "Rain" clip virtually abandons any pretense of performance and has no obvious narrative structure.The colour promotional clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" (early 1967) took the promotional film format to a new level. They used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film (experimental / visual arts / low budget), including reversed film and slow motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and colour filtering added in post-production. Reflecting the fact that these studio masterpieces were impossible for the group to perform live, their psychedelic mini-films illustrated the songs in an artful, impressionistic way rather than attempting to simulate an idealised performance or a narrative or plot.
(A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from the ordinary.)
At the end of 1967 the group released their third film, the one hour, made-for-television project Magical Mystery Tour (1967). It was however poorly received at the time for lacking a narrative structure, it showed the group to be accomplished music video makers in their own right. It included elaborate edited sequences for the new songs featured in the film and the clips for "I Am The Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know" have been screened many times on later music TV shows.
Late 1960's-1970's PROMOTIONAL CLIPS
Many "song films" or "filmed inserts" were created in this time period and were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV when the bands were not available to appear live.
-Many bands employed this:
The monochrome (b&w) 1966 clip for Bob Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D. A. Pennebaker (A Us Documentary film maker) was featured in Pennebaker's Dylan film documentary Dont Look Back. Avoiding any attempt to simulate performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large cue cards with key words from the song's lyrics written upon them.
Pink Floyd were explored this world of producing promotional films for their songs EG: "San Francisco: Film".
In the UK The Kinks made one of the first "plot" promo clips for a song. For their single "Dead End Street" (1966) which was made in the style of a miniature comic movie. (Though the BBC refused to air the clip as it was apparently in bad taste!)
The Who featured in several promotional clips in this period : EG: Happy Jack (1966) – a plot clip shows the band acting like a gang of thieves. The promotional film to Call Me Lightning (1968) tells a story of how drummer Keith Moon came to join the group.
The Small Faces made several promotional clips. For example there black and white promo for their single "Hey Girl" shows the band performing and clowning around aboard a tram with a group of female fans. A colour clip for their single "Get Yourself Together" has band members dressed as police.
The Troggs feature in a monochrome promo clip for their 1967/68 hit "Love Is All Around", showing singer Reg Presley's love affair with a girl intercut with concert footage and psychedelic elements.
the Doors.
Although it made little impression internationally, there was a thriving local The Rolling Stones appeared in many promotional clips for their songs. In 1967, Whitehead directed a plot clip colour promo clip for the Stones single "We Love You” (1967) This clip featured sped-up footage of the group recording in the studio intercut with a mock trial that clearly alludes to the drug prosecutions of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards underway at that time. Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull appears in the trial scenes and presents the "judge" (Richards) with what may be the infamous fur rug that had featured so prominently in the press reports of the drug bust at Richards' house in early 1967. When it is pulled back, it reveals an apparently naked Jagger with chains around his ankles. The clip concludes with scenes of the Stones in the studio intercut with footage that had previously been used in the "concert version" promo clip for "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby".
In 1971, avant-garde group The Residents began filming what was supposed to be the first feature length music video "Vileness Fats". Due to time constrains and technical problems, the group abandoned the project in 1976. The group did go on to create videos for "The Third Reich 'n Roll" (which used props from Vileness Fats), "One Minute Movies", "Hello Skinny", and their cover of "It's A Man's Man's Man's World
During the early 1970's David Bowie featured in a series of promotional films directed by pop photographer Mick Rock, who worked extensively with Bowie in this period. These clips are important landmarks in the development of the music video genre in the 1970s, and they are also notable because they were made by a professional photographer rather than an established film or TV director, and because Rock was given total creative control over the clips.
Birth of music television (1970's-1980's)
-big breakthroughs in Australia & UK & Us (EG:MTV)
Australia
The Australian TV shows Countdown and Sounds (premiered in 1974), significantly developed and populaised the music video genre in Australia, and many other countries.
They helped to establish the importance of music video clips as a means of promoting both emerging acts and new releases by established acts.
In 1974 a weekly teen-oriented TV music show was screened on Sydney's ATN-7 (Sydney’s flagship TV station of the Seven Network in Australia) on Saturday mornings.
In need of material for the show, the producer approached Seven newsroom staffer Russell Mulcahy and asked him to shoot film footage to accompany popular songs for which there were no purpose-made clips . Using this method they assembled a collection of about 25 clips for the show.
He relocated to the UK in the mid-1970s and Mulcahy made successful music videos for several noted British pop acts for instance : The Buggles' ( and the famous video "Video Killed The Radio Star" (1979) ) This became the first music video played on MTV in 1981.
((+ In New Zealand the seminal music TV show Radio With Pictures arose in 1976)
UK
The British TV show Top of the Pops began playing music videos at the end of the 70’s , Even though a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week the BBC still strictly limited the videos available to view. In 1980, David Bowie got his first UK number one in nearly a decade for his promo for "Ashes to Ashes", and Madness promo was also very successful - shot on 16 mm and 35 mm, constructing their clips as "micro-comedic" short films.
In 1975, the band Queen ordered Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for their new single "Bohemian Rhapsody" to show it in Top Of The Pops; this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape.
The long-running British Rock music show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" produced a number of pioneering videos made especially for the program throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. These included a video of Frank Zappa's "City of Tiny Lights" made using claymation and videos made for performers such as Television, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield.
US
American alternative punk rock group Devo created many self-produced music videos. One of their music videos "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise" was the first to use computer and traditional animation
Video Concert Hall, (was an early U.S. television network) was launched in 1979 and was the first nationwide video music programming on American television. The USA Cable Network program Night Flight was one of the first American programs to showcase these videos as an artform (Premiering in 1981) – both predating MTV’s launch.
MTV's first appearance on the dial was introduced with x2 feature-length films -The first called Shock Treatment, (a pseudo-sequel/spinoff of The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Although it was a commercial flop, the film broke stylistic ground by being more focused and less visually ambitious – and thus easier to run on a small budget.
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