History of Music Videos

A music video is a short film that accompanies a song or piece of music. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote and increase the sales of records.

People have been viewing different embodiments of music videos ever since the 1940’s, with the invention of the Panoram. The Panoram was a visual jukebox that would play films synced with music when money was inserted. The artists most associated with the Panoram include Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Cab Calloway, who are notable for their jazz music. The music videos made for the Panoram were one-song films called Promotional Clips. These were popular at social gatherings, but their popularity faded during World War II.
In the late 1950s, 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 developed.



One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo film made by The Animals for their breakthrough 1964 hit House Of the Rising Sun.
This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a studio on a specially-built set, it features the group in a lip-synched performance, depicted through an edited sequence of tracking shots, close ups and long shots, as singer Eric Burdon, guitarist Hilton Valentine and bassist Chas Chandler walked around the set in a series of choreographed moves.
In 1964, The Beatles cemented their newfound international fame by starring in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. The musical sequences provided the basic templates on which countless subsequent promo clips and music videos were modelled and it has exerted a huge influence on the style and visual vocabulary of the genre.

Film critic Roger Ebert credits Lester with constructing "a new grammar":
" ... he influenced many other films. Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of A Hard Day's Night".

In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips, known as filmed inserts, for distribution and broadcast in other countries—primarily the USA—so they could promote their record releases without having to make personal appearances.



The colour promotional clips for Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, made in early 1967 and directed by Peter Goldman took the promotional film format to a new level.
They used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film, including reversed film and slow motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and color 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 manner rather than trying to simulate an idealized performance or depict a narrative or plot.
The monochrome 1966 clip for Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues filmed by D. A. Pennebaker, which featured in Pennebaker's Dylan film documentary Don't Look Back.



Deliberately 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 (bearing key words from the song's lyrics) in time to the music, while his friends converse in the background. The cue-card device has been imitated in numerous other music videos.
Although the origins of music videos and their style go back much further, they came into their own in the 80’s, when MTV was launched- dedicating an entire channel’s programming to music videos. In 1981, Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles, became the first music video broadcast on MTV.



It could be argued that artists owe their careers to music videos, as it gives them more chance to showcase their talent to the public and critics. Thirty or so years ago, music video was less important than it is nowadays, because of the importance that MTV gave them.MTV has been highly controversial, some saw it as the beginning of a fresh era in music, others considered it to mark the end of true musical talent, as artists have been become more appreciated for their looks instead of their vocal abilities. Music videos are as important as the song itself, and are becoming a distinctive form of art in their own right.
Musical films were another important precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for Material Girl which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.



Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark John Landis clip for Thriller, which was, at the time, the most expensive music video ever made, and the Martin Scorsese-directed Bad which was influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story.



In December 1992, MTV began listing directors with the artist and song credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly become an auteur's medium. Directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Chris Cunningham all got their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including, Gondry and Jonze, went on to direct feature films. This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such as David Fincher.
As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic expression, artists have been on many occasions censored if their content is deemed offensive. What may be considered offensive will differ in countries due to censorship laws and local customs and ethics. In most cases, the record label will provide and distribute videos edited or provide both censored and uncensored videos for an artist. In some cases, it has been known for music videos to be banned in their entirety as they have been deemed far too offensive to be broadcast. Madonna is the artist most associated with music video censorship. The controversy surrounding her marketing of sexuality began with the video for Lucky Star, and amplified over time due to clips such as Like a Virgin. Outcry occurred over the subject matter discussed in Papa Don't Preach. Like a Prayer courted heavy criticism due to its religious, sexual, and racially-oriented imagery.



In 1990, Madonna's music video for the song Justify My Love was banned by MTV due to its depiction of sadomasochism, homosexuality, cross-dressing, and group sex which generated a media firestorm. Madonna's video for Erotica was aired only three times (each time after midnight) due to its sexual depictions of sadomasochism. More recently, Madonna's What It Feels Like for a Girl was banned in 2001 due to its graphic depiction of violence. She also pulled her American Life video because of its controversial military imagery that seemed inappropriate once the War in Iraq began, subsequently, a new video was made for the song. Some artists have used censorship as a publicity tool. In the 1980s, the show Top of the Pops was censorious in its approach to video content, so some acts made videos that they knew would be censored, using the resulting public controversy to promote their release. Examples of this tactic were Duran Duran's Girls on Film and Frankie Goes to Hollywood with Relax.
2005 saw the release of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of music videos online much easier and faster. The internet and websites such as YouTube gives lesser known artists and bands to showcase their music. The internet and such websites are an indicator of further developments for music videos and how they are made and presented in the future.