History of... The Music Video

The history behind the music video is a history dating back many years.Here is over 100 years of music video history condensed into one blog post.

The Illustrated Song- in the year 1894, two sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern asked an electrician, George Thomas and a group of performers to perform one of their songs, "Little Lost Child". The performance would be the first instance of an illustrated song, a song performed to accompanying images. This would also be the first step toward the evolution of music videos as we know them today.

Talkies and Soundies- These are what could be considered another influence on the music video industry. They are short films featuring bands, dancers and vocalists. These were sometimes imitated, a good example being Michael Jackson's 'Bad', influenced by 'West Side Story' 's stylized dancing.

Promotional Clips- Promotional clips are the true beginning of music videos, featuring bands/ singers in movies in order to promote their new album. A couple of examples of this include The Beetles 'A Hard Day's Night'.



















*What's important to remember is around this time, music videos weren't main stream, and didn't exist as the form we know them now. There was no conventions, no concrete rules or methods of how to present a music video, The Beetles' Hello Goodbye music video is a good example of this, it is atrocious...


Shots are long and drawn out, repeated frequently, and the bands movement, or lack thereof, makes the video just look so dull. The lack of variety clearly demonstrates a lack of conventions for music videos in this era.

The Start of MTV-"Video Killed the Radio Star", is all I can say to this, and in fact is the first video shown on the Music Television channel back in the eighties. This is when the rise of music videos truly begun, with icons rising such as Michael Jackson, who had one of the most expensive music videos ever made in the eighties with "Thriller".
Also, computer animation was becoming popular around this time, with videos being made like Dire Straits' Money For Nothing, and Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer, meaning the technology of music videos was adapting to new, modern technology



Sources:
http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/11/26/the-amazing-history-of-the-music-video/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopitone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video