Music video
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(Redirected from Music videos ) Jump to: navigation , search A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song . Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s , when MTV 's format was based around them.
Music videos are often called promo videos or simply promos , due to the fact that they are usually promotional devices. Sometimes, music videos are termed short-form music videos to distinguish them from full length movies pertaining to music. In the 1980s, the term "rock video" was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse.
Music videos can accommodate all styles of filmmaking, including animation , live action films, documentaries , and non-narrative, abstract film .
History of music videos
Early precedents
In 1910 Alexander Scriabin wrote his symphony Prometheus -- Poem of Fire for orchestra and "light organ". And as far back as the 1920s, the animated films of Oskar Fischinger (aptly labelled "visual music") were supplied with orchestral scores. Fischinger also made short animated films to advertise Electrola Records' new releases, making these films possibly the first music videos.
In 1929 the Russian film revolutionary Dziga Vertov made a 40 minute film called Man with the Movie Camera. It was an experiment on filming real, actual events, contrary to Georges Méliès theatrical approach. The film is entirely backed by music (played live by an orchestra on theaters) and has no dialogue at all. It's notable for the use of fast editing and fast frame frequencies, which were all synched to the music in order to create an emotion on the viewer. The film is highly regarded for setting the principles of the documentary genre, but it is also important in all filmmaking.
In the 1936 film version of Show Boat, Paul Robeson, as Joe, a stevedore, sings Ol' Man River in what might be called an ancestor of the modern music video. The camera does a full pan around him as he sits on a wharf singing; then on the lines "You and me, we sweat and strain", the scene dissolves to an expressionist montage set against deliberately artificial backgrounds, showing dock workers doing exactly what is being sung about ("Tote that barge, lift that bale", etc.). The camera then returns to Robeson as he finishes his solo refrain, then shows dock workers entering to sit around him and join in the song. We see another expressionist montage before returning to the full group for the closing verses.
Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, which features extended scenes of battles choreographed to a score by Sergei Prokofiev, was influenced by Vertov's work and it set new standards for the use of music in film and has been described as the first music video.
Animation pioneer Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball". Early 1930s entries in the series featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons.
The early animated efforts of Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theatres.
Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called Saint Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. It was shown in theatres until 1932. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. Later, in the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a bizarre feature film Lookout Sister; these films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the ancestors of music videos.[1]
Another early form of music video were one-song films called "Soundies" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of Soundies were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also torch singers, comedians, and dancers.
Before the Soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the Soundie made the music the star and virtually all the name jazz performers appeared in Soundie shorts, many still available on compilation video tapes or DVDs.
The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.
Film and video promos
In 1956 Tony Bennett was filmed walking along The Serpentine in Hyde Park, London as his recording of "Stranger in Paradise" played; this film was distributed to and played by UK and US television stations, leading Bennett to later claim he made the first music video.
According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959.[2]
Around 1960 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 patented.[3]
In 1961 Ozzie Nelson directed and edited the video of "Travelin' Man" by his son Ricky Nelson. It featured images of various parts of the world mentioned in the Jerry Fuller song and Ricky singing. It is believed to be the very first rock video. Ricky also had a regular music slot on the family television show which played a great part in publicizing his career.
The pioneering full-colour music video for The Exciters' "Tell Him" from 1962 greatly influenced all that came afterwards.
In 1964, Kenneth Anger's influential underground experimental short film Scorpio Rising pioneered the concept of using popular songs for ironic moments and images.
The defining work in the development of the modern music video was The Beatles' first major motion picture, A Hard Day's Night in 1964, directed by Richard Lester. The musical segments in this film arguably set out the basic visual vocabulary of today's music videos, influencing a vast number of contemporary musicians, and countless subsequent pop and rock group music videos.
That same year, The Beatles began filming short promotional films for their songs which were distributed for broadcast on television variety shows in other countries, primarily the U.S.A. (At the same time, The Byrds began using the same strategy to promote their singles in the United Kingdom, starting with the 1965 single "Set You Free This Time".) By the time The Beatles stopped touring in late 1966 their promotional films, like their recordings, were becoming increasingly sophisticated, and they now used these films to, in effect, tour for them.
Also in 1966 the clip of Bob Dylan performing "Subterranean Homesick Blues" filmed by D A Pennebaker was much used. The clip's ironic portrayal of a performance and the seemingly random inclusion of a celebrity (Allen Ginsberg) in a non-performing role also became mainstays of the form. The clip has been much imitated.
Although unashamedly based on A Hard Day's Night, the hugely popular American TV series The Monkees was another important influence on the development of the music video genre, with each episode including a number of specially-made film segments that were created to accompany the various Monkees songs used in the series. The series ran from 1966 to 1968.
The Beatles took the genre to new heights with their groundbreaking films for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", made in early 1967, which used techniques borrowed from underground and avant garde film, such as reversed film effects, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and rhythmic editing. Created at the height of the psychedelic music period, these two landmark films are among the very first purpose-made concept videos that attempt to "illustrate" the song in an artful manner, rather than just creating a film of an idealized performance.
Other pioneering music videos made during this time include the promotional films made by The Doors. The group had a strong interest in film, since both lead singer Jim Morrison and keyboard player Ray Manzarek had met while studying film at UCLA. The clip for their debut single "Break On Through" is essentially structured as a filmed performance, but it is notable for its accomplished and atmospheric lighting, camera work and editing. The Doors also directed a superb promotional clip for their controversial 1968 anti-war single "The Unknown Soldier", in which the group stage a mock execution by firing squad. One of the clip's most innovative features is its use of external visuals sources, with extensive intercutting of archival footage and shocking contemporary TV footage of the carnage of the Vietnam War.
The Rolling Stones produced videos for songs such as "We Love You" (which made reference to the persecution of Oscar Wilde), "2000 Light Years From Home", "Child of the Moon" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on the film Sympathy for the Devil.
When released in 1968, the animated film Yellow Submarine was an international sensation, although The Beatles themselves had only a tangential involvement with it. Soon it was commonplace for artists to make promotional films, and bands like The Byrds and The Beach Boys were also making promotional films. Although these "film clips" were often aired on pop music TV shows, they were still considered as secondary at that time, with live or mimed performances generally given precedence.
The promotional clip continued to grow in importance, with television programs such as The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert mixing concert footage with clips incorporating camera tricks, special effects, and dramatizations of song lyrics.
Other important contributions to the development of the genre include the film of the Woodstock Festival, and the various concert films that were made during the early Seventies, most notably Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs And Englishmen and particularly Pink Floyd's groundbreaking Live at Pompeii concert film, which featured sophisticated rhythmic cross-cutting.
Also during this time,David Bowie released his video for Space Oddity.
Many countries with local pop music industries soon copied the trend towards music videos. In Australia promotional films by Australian pop performers were being made on a regular basis by 1966; among the earliest known are clips by Australian groups The Masters Apprentices and The Loved Ones.
Surf film makers such as Bruce Brown, George Greenough and Alby Falzon also made important contributions in their films, which featured innovative combinations of images and music, and they notably dispensed with all narration and dialogue for many extended surfing sequences in their films, presenting the surfing action accompanied by suitably atmospheric music tracks.
Nicolas Roeg's 1970 cult film Performance contains a sequence in which star of the film Mick Jagger did a rendition of "Memo From Turner" combined with psychadelic video collage.
George Greenough's 1972 film Crystal Voyager included a spectacular sequence (filmed by Greenough) that was constructed around the extended Pink Floyd track "Echoes". The group reportedly agreed to allow him to use the music gratis, in exchange for a copy of Greenough's footage, which they used during their concerts for several years.
Other notable Australian developments in this field are the early 1970s monochrome promotional films made by Australian musician and filmmaker Chris Lofven, whose clips for the Spectrum song "I'll Be Gone" and the Daddy Cool song "Eagle Rock" were among the best of the early Australian music video productions. It is notable that Lofven's 1971 clip for "Eagle Rock" bears a strong stylistic resemblance to the video for the 1980 hit "Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders, and it has been speculated that original bassist Pete Farndon may well have seen the Lofven clip when he was working in Australia in the mid-1970s as a member of The Bushwackers.
The first promo clip to combine all the elements of the modern music video is David Bowie's promotional clip for the song The Jean Genie, which was released as single in late 1972 at the height of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust period. Filmed and directed by renowned photographer Mick Rock, this genre-defining four-minute film was produced for less than $350, shot in one day in San Francisco on 28th October 1972, and edited in less than two days.
The Swedish music group, ABBA, used promotional films throughout the 1970s to promote themselves in other countries when travelling or touring abroad became difficult. Almost all of these videos were directed by Chocolat and My Life as a Dog director, Lasse Hallström.
Modern era
The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was, of course, video recording and editing processes, along with the development of a number of related effects such as chroma-key. The advent of high-quality colour videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the DIY ethos of the New Wave era and this enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos quickly and cheaply, in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film. However, as the genre developed music video directors increasingly turned to 35 mm film as the preferred medium, while others mixed film and video. By the mid-1980s releasing a music video to accompany a new single had become standard, and acts like The Jacksons sought to gain a commercial edge by creating lavish music videos with million dollar budgets; most notable with the video for "Can You Feel It".
Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" also started a whole new era for using music videos as promos. The first music videos were produced by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith who started making short musical films for Saturday Night Live in 1979. In 1981, he released Elephant Parts, the first video album and first winner of a Grammy for music video directed by William Dear. A further experiment on NBC television called Television Parts was not successful, due to network meddling (notably an intrusive laugh track and corny gags). The early self-produced music videos by Devo, including the pioneering compilation "The Truth About Devolution" directed by Chuck Statler, were also important (if somewhat subversive) developments in the evolution of the genre and these Devo video cassette releases were arguably among the first true long-form video productions. Video Concert Hall, created by Jerry Crowe and Charles Henderson, was the first nationwide video music programming on American television, predating MTV by almost three years. The USA Cable Network program Night Flight was one of the first American programs to showcase these videos as an art form. Premiering in June 1981, Night Flight predated MTV's launch by two months.
Two feature-length films released on the cusp of MTV's first appearance on the dial contributed enormously to the development of the form. The first was 1981's Shock Treatment, a pseudo-sequel/spinoff of The Rocky Horror Picture Show principally written and scored by RHPS creator Richard O'Brien. The film broke stylistic ground by being more focused and less visually ambitious -and thus easier to emulate on a tight budget- than either RHPS or Ken Russel's chaotic 1975 adaptation of The Who's music and storyline from the album Tommy, or even a lower-budget affair like The Ramones' Rock 'n' Roll High School.(1979) The limited budget and resulting necessity of restraint and simplification served as an inspiration to depict the setting - Denton USA, a town completely controlled by a dictatorship in the form of a television network which subjects its inhabitants to unnecessary therapy and extreme fashion makeovers, among other eerily "reality t.v."-foreshadowing fates - in a fashion so absurdly literal (The town of Denton is literally one and the same as the DentonTV studio) that it surpasses sheer silliness and lends a surreal and comical tone to the film which requires the suspended disbelief of the viewer to make sense. In other words, Shock Treatment introduced Bertolt Brecht to the world of commercial musical filmmaking. Furthermore, the occasionally rapid-fire editing and eye-catchingly bold and simplistic colour schemes gave the emerging first wave of music video directors plenty of more ideas to work with.
