The History Of Chosen Media

The history of music video

It is argued that Bob Dylan made the first ever music video his song Subterranean Homesick Blues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J4O2-nsFBA  was played before movies at the cinema at this was the only way for the consumers to see the video as not many people had TV’s at home. The video featured as part of Dylan’s documentary called don’t look back. Within the video it shows Bob Dylan holding cards with the song’s lyrics on, this shows that he wants the audience to think about his lyrics and wants the people who are watching the video to think about what they are doing, and challenge authority. Before Bob Dylan’s video had been released, video jukeboxes called vitaphones showed silent films with music playing over them so even though the song was created for that particular film it still could be classed as a music video.

Within the 40’s/50 videos started to introduce a narrative to particular songs, and moving to the mid 50’s artists such as Elvis started to feature in films their character would sing and perform alongside the narrative, these movies helped promote the artists as not many people had TV’s within their homes.

The music industry started to develop in the early 60’s with the introduction of independent record labels, mid 60’s pirate radio stations opened as there was no formal radio stations, as these stations were located off shore of Britain, they didn’t have to follow any rules or regulations,` it helped it’s listener challenge rules and leaders this has been portrayed in films such as the boat that rocked http://www.workingtitlefilms.com/films/view/film/96/the-boat-that-rocked-pirate-radio. It was estimated that they got 10 – 15 million listeners daily. However in 1967 pirate stations officially became illegal, The BBC then started up BBC Radio One to replace pirate radio many of the shows presenters started off in pirate stations.

In 1964, The Beatles starred in the film A hard day’s night It was filmed in black and white and featured The Beatles playing themselves. As there were no stadiums or any other infrastructure to hold many people not many people got to see the Beatles, so they made feature films so their fans could see them perform and find out more about the band, as a cinema was the biggest establishment for the band to be seen. While filming the band performing, the camera would show all of the members of the band, it would then show a close up of the band members faces especially John and Paul, as they were the ones singing. It would also show a close up of the instruments and extreme close ups on the finger board and the sound hole, so the fans could see what chords the band was playing. In 1965, the band released another feature film help! This time the film was shot in colour, and while the band were performing hide your love away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAlrFJbGdgw It showed them sat in a room with them all performing their individual instruments, it once again showed close ups of their faces and instruments especially John, it also showed a separate scene where Paul was sat with a women wearing pink, this showed a slight sign of narrative as there was other characters not just the band, and it looked as if Paul was singing directly to him, and it showed that she was aware of his presence. Also in 1965, The Who starred in many promotional clips for their single called I can’t explain.

Top of the pops, which had been running since 1964, started to showing music videos in the late 1970’s, this made singles sales rocket as if people thought the video they saw was good, they bought the single so they could see it the week after as well. In 1975 Bruce Gowers was directed by Queen to create a promotional video for their new single Bohemian Rhapsody. This video is famous known for been filmed and edited on video tape. The video was one of the most expensive of its time, costing £5,000. The video shows a close up of all the band members singing with a black background and their faces in the shade, they are all singing together in an operatic style. As the song starts and it is very slow lots of dissolves are used this happens until the style of the song changes at about 3.08 minutes and then it’s mostly jump cuts that are use. As the background of the video is very dark they are all wearing fully white, which usually symbols purity and innocence however you first see the band members in white while singing “mamma, just killed a man” The video uses zooms to highlight the hands of band members when they are each playing their different instruments, such as the piano and guitar. The old grey whistle test, which showed rock music, ran from 1971-1987 It created videos especially to be shown on the programme it featured bands such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

Music videos became mainstream when the launch of the American station MTV in 1981, this was the first of its kind airing music videos 24 hours a day. The first video to be shown was video killed the radio star http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs&ob=av2n In the 1980’s MTV became a central marketing tool for popular music, and many artists such as Adam and the ants and Madonna had major success. In 1983, Michael Jacksons video for thriller was released in total the video lasts for just under 14 minutes, it has been said to the most influential video ever and the most successful, it cost a total of $500,000 to film. The video started by showing the artists name and also the title of the song. The video starts with an extended narrative, with sound effects of frogs and crickets it then shows Michael Jackson and a female character it shows them speaking, walking down a driveway and then Michael turning into a monster. The song doesn’t actually start until 4.14 minutes. The name of the film that the characters are going to see is actually the name of the song, this is to remind the audience about the song, and that it is about to start. Within the middle of the song there is a voice over as the zombies come to life and the main part of the music video is about to begin, It then shows Michael as the lead zombie him and the other zombies begin to do once of the most influential dances in history, the lyrics of the song resume at about 9.43. At the end it also shows who directed, produced and wrote it, this was a first. This video set the next level of standard for all other video to follow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&ob=av2n

Peter Gabriel’s song sledgehammer created in 1986 and directed by Stephen R Johnson, showed a new way of music video, the video was created by animation and a range of special effects it was created by the same animators of Wallace and Gromit, in total the video won 9 MTV video music awards which had started in 1984, and was voted 4^th in the best 100 music videos ever made (1999). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tTN-b5KHg

MTV started to list directors, producers and artists in December 1992, this was making people take note of who was involved in the creation of videos, giving them respect and creative credit.

In 1997 the website iFilm opened up it showed short films and music videos. In 1999, the peer-to-peer website Napster opened this was where people were able to share music tracks and videos between themselves, due to this by the mid 2000’s MTV had stopped showing music video’s 24 hours and decided to show a range of reality TV shows that were increasing in popularity. In 2005 YouTube opened this made viewing videos on the Internet easier than ever before, and is probably now the most influential video tool. 30 second to mars release their music video ‘kings and queens’ on YouTube, within the first day it had managed to get 100 million views, they also released it on MySpace 40 million views which at the time MySpace was still had a large influence on music consumers, iTunes also featured the ‘kings and queens’ video as video of the week and to this day still hold the record for the most downloaded videos ever to be featured. Lady Ga Ga broke records in 2010 when her track ‘bad romance’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I&ob=av3e became the most viewed video that was music related after getting 130 million views, and by early 2011 it had managed over 350 million views and to this day has 419,632,267 views, however this record was later broken in 2011 by Justin Bieber's video ‘baby’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4&ob=av2e that had over 500 million views. As you can also see throughout time the style of music videos have changed you could also argue there purpose as once it was a way to show audience’s the band and the song, now especially with female artists it’s still used to sell the single but also show their sexuality, with artists such as Rhianna with music videos such as ‘s and m’ getting banned of TV as they were to ‘raunchy.

 Also every band/artist has their own website and when you go on to them straight away you are presented with their latest music video embedded into the site.

 The Internet has changed the way people watch music videos, and has managed to destroy channels such as MTV that has had to change its main purpose so people still watch it. It has become so influential in recent years and managed to create mainstream artists such as Soulja boy and Jessie J who has managed to go on and produce a number one album and a winner of Brit awards.