History of Music Videos

The music video as we know today all began somewhere and this will tell how they quickly surpassed other popular methods of promoting music and leading up to be mainstream in the modern world.

Firstly, music videos are short films that accompanies a song in order to give some action to the lyrics and make it exiting and enjoyable to watch, however some music videos do subvert the stereotype of the lyrics being acted out, one example is the Gorillaz “Clint Eastwood”. Despite being extremely common nowadays, they’re mainly intended to be a marketing device in order to promote the sale of music recordings.

The first ever music video of sorts was XTC’s “Making plans for Nigel” in 1979. Little music promos had existed decades before, but this was the first ever acknowledge music video and after the success of this they became mainstream in modern music culture. Other bands after this took off in the 1980’s such as Queen, The Beatles, The Monkeys and finally Michael Jackson to name a few.

The Development of Music Promo’s

Camera/Shot Types= virtually any shot type can be employed in music videos, but certain genres use more of certain shot types than others. An example of this could be long-shots in hip-hop videos to show the full body of the rapper to show off his wealth and status, as well as close-ups in pop videos to show the artists face, this is done more often for females as opposed to males. Examples of a few music videos that use a more varied and innovative use of camera shots are, Marilyn Manson’s “Sweet Dreams” and Seethers “Truth”.

Editing= There are so many forms of editing involved but the most common usage within music videos is the timing are cropped to make the transitions perfect in accordance with the flow of the beat or lyrics of the song.  There on occasion is also sound editing to adjust minor errors with the artists or backgrounds noise.

Mise-En-Scene= Mise-En-Scenes in music videos can be anything from a vast desert in a pop video to a secluded creepy dungeon in a punk rock video.

Genre= Music videos are used for all genres of music but are not commonly done for the recently introduced “Indie” genre due to it wanting to be unique and stand out from the crows ad well as promote what they stand for.

Representation= It is really hard to put a finger on representation due to it being used so mush in music videos. However,  the most common two are wealth, such as rap and pop videos promoting success and g=happiness in life to trying to promote good causes, such as Michael Jacksons “Earth Song” and Linkin Parks “What I’ve Done”.

Narrative/Performance= there are so many narratives it is impossible to explain them all due to their vast diversity but performances vary from genre to genre, such as generally pop videos incorporate an lot more dancing and vivid movements from the artists that what rock videos have.

Overall, music videos have come a long way since they were first introduced and there phenomenal success has been amplified by famous artists utilising them and the formation of music channels in the 1980’s such as MTV which boomed and subsequently the Golden Globe awards finally began to give out awards for music.