Music videos originated in the 1950s as promotional films for songs. Early examples included Tony Bennett walking in Hyde Park to "Stranger in Paradise" in 1956. In the 1960s, films like A Hard Day's Night helped establish the format. The Beatles pioneered conceptual videos for songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever" in 1967. MTV launched in 1981 and greatly increased the prominence of music videos, helping artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna achieve success through creative videos that told stories. By the mid-1980s, lavish big budget videos had become a key part of the music industry marketing machine.

1. History of Music Videos.
BRETT MOORE

2. Brief Outline.
Music videos are often called promotion videos or simply promos, due to the fact that they are
usually promotional devices. Sometimes, music videos are termed short-form music videos to
distinguish them from full length movies pertaining to music. In the 1980s, the term "rock
video" was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into
disuse.

3. Early Stages.
The earliest music videos or music promos were filmed in the mid 1950’s, however, before then, as early as the 1920’s,
films by animators such as Oskar Fischinger were accompanied by musical scores labeld ‘visual music’.
The early animated efforts of Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. The Warner Brothers
cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from
upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab
Calloway, were also distributed to theatres.
The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded
during World War II.
Source: Wilkepedia

4. 1950-60.
In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The
Serpentine in Hyde Park, London as his recording of
"Stranger in Paradise" played; this film was distributed to
and played by UK and US television stations, leading Bennett
to later claim he made the first music video.
According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-
singer J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson (d. 1959) was the
first to coin the phrase "rock video"
Around 1960 the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented
in France and short films were produced by many French
artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy and
Jacques Dutronc to accompany their songs. Its use spread to
other countries and similar machines such as the Cinebox in
Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented.

5. Continued…
The defining work in the development of the modern music video was The Beatles' first major motion
picture, A Hard Day's Night in 1964, directed by Richard Lester. The musical segments in this film
arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of today's music videos, influencing a vast number of
contemporary musicians, and countless subsequent pop and rock group music videos.
Although unashamedly based on A Hard Day's Night, the hugely popular American TV series The
Monkees was another important influence on the development of the music video genre, with each
episode including a number of specially-made film segments that were created to accompany the
various Monkees songs used in the series. The series ran from 1966 to 1968.
The Beatles took the genre to new heights with their groundbreaking films for "Strawberry Fields
Forever" and "Penny Lane", made in early 1967, which used techniques borrowed from underground
and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and
rhythmic editing. Created at the height of the psychedelic music period, these two landmark films are
among the very first purpose-made concept videos that attempt to "illustrate" the song in an artful
manner, rather than just creating a film of an idealized performance.
In 1966 the clip of Bob Dylan performing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D A Pennebaker
was much used. The clip's ironic portrayal of a performance and the seemingly random inclusion of a
celebrity (Allen Ginsberg) in a non-performing role also became mainstays of the form. The clip has
been much imitated.

6. Later Developments.
The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was, of course, video
recording and editing processes, along with the development of a number of related effects
such as chroma-key. The advent of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video
cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era and this 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 35mm
film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video.
By the mid-1980s releasing a music video to accompany a new single had become standard, and
acts like The Jackson's sought to gain a commercial edge by creating lavish music videos with
million dollar budgets; most notable with the video for "Can You Feel It".

7. 1970.
In the UK the importance of Top of the Pops to promote a single created an environment of
innovation and competition amongst bands and record labels as the show's producers placed
strict limits on the number of videos it would use - therefore a good video would increase a
song's sales as viewers hoped to see the video again the following week.
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" also started a whole new era for using music videos as promos.
American band Devo were one of the first to create
The early self-produced music videos by Devo, including the pioneering compilation "The Truth
About Devolution" directed by Chuck Statler, were also important (if somewhat subversive)
developments in the evolution of the genre and these Devo video cassette releases were
arguably among the first true long-form video productions.

8. 1980.
1981- MTV is launched, The first video to be aired is Buggles ‘Video killed the Radio Star’
David Bowie scored his first UK number one in nearly a decade thanks to director David Mallets' eye
catching promo for "Ashes to Ashes" .
In the early to mid 1980s, artists started to use more sophisticated effects in their videos, and added a
storyline or plot to the music video. Michael Jackson was the first artist to create the concept of the short
film. A short film is a music video that has a beginning, middle and end. He did this in a small way with Billie
Jean, directed by Steve Barron, then in a West Side Story way with director Bob Giraldi's Beat It, but it
wasn't until the 1984 release of the Thriller short film that he took the music video format to another level.
Top of the Pops was censorous in it’s approach to video content, so another approach was for an act to
produce a promo that would be banned or edited and so use the resulting controversy and publicity to
promote the release. Early examples of this tactic were Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" and Frankie Goes to
Hollywood with "Relax" directed by Bernard Rose & White lines by Grandmaster Flash
A non-representational music video is one in which the musical artist is hardly shown. Because music videos
are mainly intended to promote the artist, such videos are rare; an early 1980s example of this is Herbie
Hancock’s Rock it!

9. MTV
Music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play
a central role in popular music marketing.
Madonna, owed a great deal of her success to the
skillful construction and seductive appeal of her
videos. Some academics have compared music
video to silent film, and it is suggested that stars
like Madonna have (often quite deliberately)
constructed an image that in many ways echoes
the image of the great stars of the silent era such
as Greta Garbo. Although many see MTV as the
start of a "golden era" of music videos and the
unparalleled success of a new artform in popular
culture, others see it as hastening the death of the
true musical artist, because physical appeal is now
critical to popularity to an unprecedented degree.

10. Timeline. (Wikipedia).