History of Music Videos
In the late 1950's the Scopitone was invented, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Brel, 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.
In 1964, the Beatles starred in their first feature film 'A Hard Day's Night', directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it consisted of comedic and dialogue sequences with musical tones. These musical sequences were then modelled after, creating the conventions we still loosely stick to today. The Beatles' second feature 'Help!' (1965) was a much more lavish affair, filmed in colour in London and other international locations. The title track sequence, filmed in black-and-white, is arguably one of the prime archetypes of the modern performance-style music video, employing rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close-ups, and unusual shots and camera angles, such as the shot 50 seconds into the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the completely out-of-focus figure of John Lennon sings in the background.
In 1965, the Beatles began making promotional clips (then called "filmed inserts") for distribution and broadcast in other countries so they could promote their record releases without having to make in-person appearances, which take up a lot of time and money. Their first batch of promo videos recorded in late 1965, were fairly simplistic and just mimed-in-studio performance pieces and were made to blend in fairly seamlessly with popular television shows like Top of the Pops and Hullabaloo. At the end of 1967 the group released their third film, the one hour, made-for-television project Magical Mystery Tour, written and directed by the group and first broadcast on the BBC on Boxing Day 1967. Although poorly received at the time for lacking a narrative structure, it showed the group to be accomplished music video makers in their own right.
The long-running British TV show 'Top of the Pops' began playing music videos in the late 1970s, although the BBC placed strict limits on the number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use and therefore a good video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it again the following week. 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, which was very notable for being entirely shot and edited on videotape.
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran and Madonna, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos.
Useful Links:
- http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mtv-youtube-brief-history-music-videos/
- http://www.history.com/news/the-music-video-before-music-television
