History Of Music Videos

(By Josh)

As a group we found this video on YouTube and thought it was a really cool presentation on how music has changed over the years. The development in music genre popularity has changed dramatically and this talented group called the 'Pentatonix' start by singing a song from the early 11th century and finishing with a complation of songs in 2010.

The first ever music video was performed a band called Batcat and they featured in the firstever music video made according to my research, it was produced in 1932. The video is formed of a lot of transitions between scenes that look like they are shot in a space environment also mixed in with a ot of fragmented shots of the band perfoming the song. The whole video is in black and white and the camera quality is poor and it seems as if there are a lot of static balls traveling accross the screen throughout the music video. It was produced by gramophone. The band, Batcat, was famous for their experiments with electromagnetism, Geodesic instruments & low frequency subliminal recordings. This is displayed in the music video with the space scenes, this shows that even music videos in the 1930s were used as a tool to promote the style of the artists within it.

First Ever Music Video

As you can see on the visual presentation on the right the introduction of coloured music videos was taken out in the 1960s. The quality of the music videos were becoming more visual tools and depicted to attitudes and style of the bands or artists through mise en scene and the way the character acted and performed during the music video. For example Elvis Presley characterises his personality through his performance in Return to Slender (As shown on the right 0.33) using his iconic dance moves and good looks to help compliment his singles and is used as a tool to the success of Elvis Presley. The music videos still consisted of almost 100% performance and they are predominantly filmed head on facing the band as they perform the single. This simple shot is the main shots for most of the music videos and is referred to throughout.

As you can see from the introduction of Take on me you can see that narrative started to take a major role in the construction of music videos. The video begins with a series of drawings which are displayed on the beat of the music. This is a much more innovative way to start a music video compared to the previous decade which heavily realied on performance and did not provide any narrative performance to the viewer. The use of these drawings makes the musci video a much more creative tool to promote and artist and allowed producers to convey their artist in a particular with the narrative showing the emotions of the songand the artist combined. When the lyrics begin in the song "Take on me" (the video on the right) the women in shot does not perform them and the viewer is encouraged to take in the setting and situation the character is in rather than simplistic cut scenes of performance. This helps display emotion and also compliments the music visualy to make music more stimulating for fans or casual viewers.

The Sex Pistols song, God save the Queen was a huge hit in the 1970s, the music vide is comprised of intricate shots but still mainly contains performance in the video. There are small amount of narrative laced within the video involving fire but these shots only last a few seconds. The camera is handheld throughout most of the video and is very shaky mimicking the style of a rock band. The camera quality compared to videos now but the quality has improved from the 60s with colour film being predominant in the industry at this stage.

Music Videos In The 1960's

Music Videos In The 1970's

Music Videos In The 1980's

Music Videos In The 1990's

The 1990s is where narrative and performance really started to compliment eachother and music videos started to display both a mix of narrative and performance, this was a powerful tool in making the videos more entertaining but alos a great opportunity to create a stable iconography within the videos. Intricate editing allows the producers to run a narrative story alongside the performance of the song, almost making the videos a short story which either conveys what the lyrics suggest or contracdict this idea for a more creative twist.