The History Of Music Videos

 

To gain more understanding of the task included in this project I have been researching the history of music videos and have discovered that the first step towards a music video occurred when and electrician called George Thomas projected photographs onto a screen behind a live performance. I think this is a very interesting idea and introduces more excitement into watching music. I know of a Maximo Park video that uses this convention and they are a band involved with our preferred indie genre. Perhaps we could represent this into our own performance footage by also projecting images behind the band. In the early stages of music videos, animation artists such as Max Fleischer began working on sing along cartoons where lyrics would appear for the audience to sing, I remember being aware of this during the drive in scene of Grease.

Early Hollywood musicals from the 30’s and 50’s have also inspired videos by artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, the iconic dance scene in Thriller for example, was influenced by fights in West Side Story. I also learnt that The Animals “House of the Rising Sun” was one of the first high quality colour videos of the time; it was filmed in a studio with a specially-built set. As a fan of The Beatles it was interesting to find out more about the popularity and excitement of their videos, A Hard Day’s Night being one of the most well-known due to its inventive, high quality style of editing. I would love to also create an impacting and memorable video that includes rare ideas not often used by other media students. I think in doing this I should consider an interesting narrative concept and visual style.

I already knew that Top of the Pops and MTV were contributing factors to the promotion of music videos but I further learnt that this prompted directors to become even more creative with their ideas as there was more publicity and competition to consider. I feel that this has continued and even grown into today’s state of music with the global launch of YouTube increasing pressure to perform. Videos by Lady Gaga and OK Go being examples of a desire to impress and excite audiences, creating hype and extra publicity. 'Bad Romance' for example broke records by becoming the most viewed video on Youtube. With this in mind I feel now music videos are equally, if not more, important than the song itself. Carrying out this research has interested and inspired me to want to create a diverse and exciting music video with the intention to interest viewers.