A
music video is a short
film
or
video that accompanies a complete piece of
music/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 based their format around the medium, and
later with the launch of
VH1. The term "music
video" first came into popular usage in the early 1980s. Prior to
that time, these works were described by various terms including
"filmed insert", "promotional (promo) film", "promotional (promo)
clip" or "film clip".
In Chinese
entertainment, music videos are simply known as MTVs
because the network was responsible for bringing music videos to
popularity in that country.
Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques,
including
animation,
live action filming,
documentaries, and non-narrative approaches
such as
abstract film. Some music
videos blend different styles, such as animation and live
action.
History
With the arrival of the sound films and talkies in 1926, many
musical short films were produced.
Vitaphone shorts (1926–30), which were
produced by Warner Bros, featured many bands, vocalists and
dancers. The series entitled
Spooney
Melodies was the first true musical video series. The shorts
were typically about six minutes in duration, and featured art deco
style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the
performer singing the song. This series of shorts can arguably be
considered to be the earliest music videos.
Animation artist
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 cartoons featured popular musicians performing
their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the
cartoons.
The early animated films by
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 Nick Graves appeared in a
two-reel short film called
St. 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 feature
film
Lookout Sister; these
films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the
ancestors of music videos.
Another early form of music video were one-song films called
"
Promotional Clips" 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 of "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. The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute
Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded
during
World War II.
Musical films were another important
precursor to music video, and several well-known music videos have
imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to
the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video
for "
Material Girl" (directed by
Mary Lambert) which was closely
modelled on
Jack Cole's
staging of "
Diamonds
Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Several of
Michael Jackson's videos
show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic
Hollywood musicals, including the landmark
John Landis clip for "
Thriller" (at the time, the most
expensive music video ever made) and the
Martin Scorsese-directed "
Bad" which was influenced by the
stylised dance "fights" in the film version of
West Side Story
In 1956,
Petrushka, directed by
John David Wilson for
Fine Arts Films aired as a segment of the
Sol Hurok Music Hour on
NBC.
Igor
Stravinsky conducted a live orchestra for the recording of the
event.
In
1957, 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. 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. It is no coincidence that
the rise of popular music was tied with the rise of television, as
the format allowed for many new stars to be exposed that previously
would have been passed over by Hollywood, which normally required
proven acts in order to attract an audience to the box
office.
1960–1967: Visual innovation
In the late 1950s 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. 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 along with
Nelson's vocals. In 1964,
Kenneth
Anger's underground experimental short film
Scorpio Rising used popular songs.
In Canada, for
Singalong Jubilee,
Manny Pittson began pre-recording the
music audio, went on location and taped various visuals with the
musicians lip-syncing, then edited the audio and video together
later. Most music numbers were taped in studio on stage, and the
location shoot "videos" were to add variety.
One of the earliest performance clips in 1960s pop was the promo
film made by
The Animals for their
breakthrough 1964 hit "
House Of
The Rising Sun". This high-quality colour clip was filmed in a
studio on a specially-built set; it features the group in a
lip-synched performance, depicted through an edited sequence of
tracking shots, closeups and longshots, as singer Eric Burdon,
guitarist Hilton Valentine and bassist Chas Chandler walked around
the set in a series of choreographed moves.
The Beatles
In 1964,
The Beatles cemented their
newfound international fame by starring in their first feature film
A Hard Day's
Night, directed by
Richard
Lester. Shot in black and white and presented as a mock
documentary, it was a loosely structured musical fantasia
interspersing comedic and dialogue sequences with exciting and
innovative musical sequences. The musical sequences furnished the
basic templates on which countless subsequent promo clips and music
videos were modelled and it has exerted a huge influence on the
style and visual vocabulary of the genre. It was the direct model
for the successful US TV series
The
Monkees (1966–1968) which similarly consisted of film
segments that were created to accompany various Monkees
songs.
Film critic
Roger Ebert credits Lester
with constructing "a new grammar":
- " ... he influenced many other films. Today when we watch TV
and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on
the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue,
music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the
modern style, we are looking at the children of A Hard Day's
Night".
The Beatles' second feature
Help! (1965) was a much more lavish
affair, filmed in colour in London and on international locations.
It fitted the all-important musical sequences into a contrived
fantasy adventure in which the group is pursued through a series of
locales (including Switzerland and The Bahamas) by a band of Indian
thuggee assassins bent on recovering a
sacred ring which has come into Ringo's possession. The title track
sequence, filmed in black-and-white, is arguably one of the prime
archetypes of the modern performance-style music video, employing
rhythmic cross-cutting, contrasting long shots and close-ups, and
unusual shots and camera angles, such as the shot near the end of
the song, in which George Harrison's left hand and the neck of his
guitar are seen in sharp focus in the foreground while the
completely out-of-focus figure of John Lennon sings in the
background.
In 1965, The Beatles began making promotional clips (then known as
"filmed inserts") for distribution and broadcast in other
countries—primarily the USA—so they could promote their record
releases without having to make in-person appearances. On November
23, 1965: At Twickenham Film Studios, The Beatles videotaped 10
black & white promo films, all produced by a British production
company Intertel. They were "We Can Work It Out" (3 Versions), "Day
Tripper" (3 Versions), "Help!" (1 Version), "Ticket To Ride" (1
Version), and "I Feel Fine" (2 Versions, neither of which were ever
aired). One version each of the first two songs were aired on
"Hullaballo" in the US on Jan 3 1966. Many clips were aired on "Top
of the Pops" in the UK, and two were aired on "Thank Your Lucky
Stars." Recent reports indicate the entire reel is circulating
among collectors. "Help" and "Ticket To Ride" were re-released to
accompany the CD release of the "1962-1966" or "Red" album in 1993.
Composite edits of "We Can Work It Out", "Day Tripper", and "Ticket
To Ride" are seen in "The Beatles Anthology," DVD set.
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, had become highly
sophisticated. In May 1966 they filmed two sets of colour
promotional clips for their current single "
Rain" /
Paperback Writer" all directed by
Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who went on to
direct The Rolling Stones'
Rock'n'Roll Circus and The Beatles
final film
Let It Be. The studio
clips were straightforward performance films shot at Abbey Road
Studios on 19 May, especially for broadcast on
The Ed Sullivan Show and prefaced
by a spoken introduction from Ringo.
The
location clips are considerably more elaborate and use vibrant
colour footage shot on location in the grounds of Chiswick House
, London. Both clips are notable for their
use of hand-held camera work, rhythmic editing, slow motion shots
and reversed film. The "
Paperback
Writer" clip is more conventional, with Lennon, McCartney and
Harrison lip-synching and miming playing their instruments
(although Ringo is notably not 'playing'). The "
Rain" clip marked a major advance in
stylistic terms; it uses some colour shots common to both clips but
is also intercut with monochrome reductions of the Abbey Road
studio footage, making it one of the first examples of this device
in music video. Most notably, apart from a few brief shots (a
close-up of Lennon lip-synching and a shot of the group under a
tree miming playing their instruments) the "Rain" clip virtually
abandons any pretense of performance and has no obvious narrative
structure.
The colour
promotional clips for "Strawberry Fields Forever" and
"Penny
Lane
", made in early 1967 and directed by Peter Goldman took the promotional film format
to a new level. They used techniques borrowed from
underground and avant garde film, including reversed film and slow
motion, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles and color
filtering added in post-production. Reflecting the fact that these
studio masterpieces were impossible for the group to perform live,
their
psychedelic mini-films illustrated
the songs in an artful, impressionistic manner rather than trying
to simulate an idealised performance or depict a narrative or
plot.
At the end of 1967 the group released their third film, the one
hour, made-for-television project
Magical Mystery Tour; it
was written and directed by the group and first broadcast on the
BBC on
Boxing Day
1967. Although poorly received at the time for lacking a narrative
structure, it showed the group to be accomplished music video
makers in their own right. It included elaborate edited sequences
for the new songs featured in the film and the clips for "I Am The
Walrus" and "Your Mother Should Know" have been screened many times
on music TV shows in later years.
1967–1973: Promotional clips grow in importance
The monochrome 1966 clip for
Bob Dylan's
"
Subterranean Homesick
Blues" filmed by
D. A. Pennebaker was featured in Pennebaker's
Dylan film documentary
Don't Look
Back. Deliberately eschewing any attempt to simulate
performance or present a narrative, the clip shows Dylan standing
in a city back alley, silently shuffling a series of large cue
cards (bearing key words from the song's lyrics) in time to the
music, while his friends
Allen
Ginsberg and
Bob Neuwirth converse
in the background. The cue-card device has been imitated in
numerous other music videos.
Many "song films"—often referred to as "filmed inserts" at that
time—were produced by UK artists so they could be screened on TV
when the bands were not available to appear live.
Pink Floyd were pioneers in producing promotional
films for their songs including "
Scarecrow", "
Arnold Layne" and "Interstellar Overdrive", the
latter directed by
Peter
Whitehead, who also made several pioneering clips for
The Rolling Stones between 1966 and
1968.
In the UK
The Kinks made one of the first
real "
plot" promo clips for a song.
For their
single "Dead End Street"
(1966) a miniature comic movie was made, where members of the Kinks
acted like undertakers in old London streets, mainly Little Green
Street
in Kentish
Town
. The clip also shows photo stills from the
Great Depression, an uprising dead
man and
Dave Davies playing an old
woman. Unusually for the time, there was no lip-sync, but the clip
was edited according to the phases of song. The BBC reportedly
refused to air the clip because it was considered to be in "poor
taste".
The Who featured in several promotional clips in this period,
beginning with their 1965 clip for "I Can't Explain". Their plot
clip for "
Happy Jack" in shows the
band is acting like a gang of idiotic thieves robbing an apartment.
They can't resist eating a cake and this leads to a cream-pie
battle with a cop. There is no lip-sync in this clip either.
The Moody Blues made a promo video
for their 1967 single "
Nights in
White Satin". It shows the band lip-syncing along the track in
a mysterious environment in Paris.
Procol Harum made two promos for their
1967 hit "
A Whiter Shade of
Pale". One version shows band members walking among ruins,
footage of them performing the song onstage and documentary footage
of the
Vietnam war. The second version,
filmed in colour, shows the band running towards camera (a device
pioneered in
A Hard Day's Night), followed by close-up of
Gary Brooker lip-syncing the song and several surrealistic
sequences of the band gambolling in a churchyard. Other frames show
band in crowded London streets, and Brooker standing in Piccadilly
Circus.
The Small Faces made several
promotional clips in 1966–67. The B&W promo for their 1966
single "Hey Girl" shows the band performing and clowning around
aboard a tram with a group of female fans. A colour clip for their
1967 single "Get Yourself Together", filmed at various locations
around London, with Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones
dressed as police, pursuing Steve Marriott and then acting out a
mock beating. The promo for the single "Talk To You" (also from
their 1967 self-titled LP) was a straightforward performance clip
filmed in a large house, showing the band miming to the song.
The Troggs feature in a monochrome promo
clip for their 1967/68 hit "
Love Is All Around",
showing singer
Reg Presley's love affair
with a girl in the train on which the band is travelling. Through
the clip, which includes some concert footage, the compartment in
which they are seated is gradually transformed with flowers, floral
patterned wallpaper, silver foil and other psychedelic
elements.
The Doors had a background in film-making and both
lead singer Jim Morrison and keyboard
player Ray Manzarek were studying film
at UCLA
when they met. The clip for their debut
single "
Break On
Through " is a filmed performance that uses atmospheric
lighting, camera work and editing. It was directed by Elektra
Records producer
Mark Abramson. Their
1968 anti-war single
"The Unknown
Soldier", combines specially filmed footage of the
group—including the depiction of a mock execution by firing
squad—with extensive intercutting of stock footage, including
graphic footage of the carnage of the
Vietnam War. It was also directed by
Mark Abramson based on input from Morrison and
the Doors.
Although it made little impression internationally, there was a
thriving local pop scene in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s
and bands there were quick to pick up on British and American
trends. By 1967 a number of bands were creating early music videos
for their songs. One of the first was the pioneering clip made by
The Masters Apprentices for
their 1967 single "Buried And Dead", which used candid stage and
studio footage of the band combined with specially filmed fantasy
sequences. Another notable Australian clip from this period is the
promotional clip for "The Loved One" by
The Loved Ones, directed by
Peter L. Lamb as
part of his 1967 short film
Approximately Panther.
The Rolling Stones appeared in
many promotional clips for their songs in the 1960s. One of the
earliest, dating from 1964, showed the band on a beach, miming to
their single "Not Fade Away", but this has apparently since been
lost. In 1966,
Peter
Whitehead directed two promo clips for their single "
Have
You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?". The
so-called "drag" version contains a mixture of footage including
snippets of concert footage, street scenes in New York, shots of
Jagger walking along a street while being filmed from a car, and
shots of the band preparing for and being photographed for the
famous "drag" cover photo used on the picture sleeve of the single.
The longer ["concert" version] opens with a minute-long
introduction in which Jagger and Richards clown around on a piano
(including a short scene of Jagger wordlessly singing The Beatles
"
I Feel Fine"). This leads into the
song, which begins with speeded-up shots of the group backstage,
followed by footage of a riotous Sept.
1966 performance at
the Royal Albert
Hall
, in which girls repeatedly storm the stage and are
thrown back into the audience by security.
In 1967, Whitehead directed a plot clip colour promo clip for the
Stones single "
We Love You", which first
aired in August 1967. This clip featured speeded-up footage of the
group recording in the studio (including several shots of an
extremely stoned-looking Brian Jones), intercut with a mock trial
that clearly alludes to the drug prosecutions of
Mick Jagger and
Keith
Richards underway at that time). Jagger's girlfriend
Marianne Faithfull appears in the trial
scenes and presents the "judge" (Richards) with what may be the
infamous fur rug that had featured so prominently in the press
reports of the drug bust at Richards' house in early 1967. When it
is pulled back, it reveals an apparently naked Jagger with chains
around his ankles. The clip concludes with scenes of the Stones in
the studio intercut with footage that had previously been used in
the "concert version" promo clip for "Have You Seen Your Mother,
Baby". The group also filmed a colour promo clip for the song "2000
Light Years From Home" (from their album
Their Satanic Majesties
Request) directed by
Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
In 1968,
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
directed three clips for their single "Jumping Jack Flash" / "Child
Of The Moon"—a colour clip for "Child Of The Moon" and two
different clips for "
Jumpin' Jack
Flash". One was a [monochrome clip] with what appears to be a
live performance of the song; the other is the better-known colour
clip, featuring the band in heavy makeup, miming to the same live
recording used in the B&W clip.
In 1968,
they collaborated with Jean-Luc
Godard on the film Sympathy for the Devil,
which mixed Godard's political tracts with documentary footage of
the song's evolution during the recording sessions at Olympic
Studios
in London. At the end of the year
Lindsay-Hogg again collaborated with the Stones on their most
ambitious project to date, the feature-length performance film
Rock 'n' Roll Circus,
which also featured John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton and rising
UK band
Jethro Tull, but
unfortunately the film was shelved before its release because the
group at the time felt that their own performances had been below
par.
Leonard Nimoy's notorious
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
(1968) is also an example of an early music video. So are two
videos of
Lou Christie for "I'm Gonna
Make You Mine" in 1969.
The Carpenters made a promo clip of
their cover of the Beatles hit "
Ticket to
Ride".
After 1969, the independent music movie clips came out of fashion
with psychedelic music and style. In the late 1960s and early
1970s, bands preferred performing in TV shows which themselves
became visually more attractive. Some artists were featured in
straightforward documentaries such as
The
Beatles in "
Let It Be" and the
Rolling Stones in "
Gimme Shelter".
On the
The Sonny
& Cher Comedy Hour, which ran from 1971 to 1974,
director
Chris Bearde enlisted animator
John David Wilson to direct
animated segments of current hits of the day reinterpreted by the
duo. Songs included
Coven's "
One Tin Soldier",
Three Dog Night's "
Black and White" and
Melanie's "
Brand New
Key". Wilson later went on to self-produce many more animated
videos for artists such as
Joni
Mitchell,
Bob Dylan and
Jim Croce.
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.
The film
of the Woodstock
Festival
, and the various concert films that were made
during the early 1970s, such as Joe
Cocker's Mad
Dogs and Englishmen and Pink
Floyd's Live at
Pompeii concert film used rhythmic
cross-cutting.
In 1971, avant-garde group
The
Residents began filming what was supposed to be the first
feature length music video "Vileness Fats". Due to time constrains
and technical problems, the group abandoned the project in 1976.
The group would, however, create videos for "
The Third Reich 'n Roll" (which used
props from Vileness Fats),
"One
Minute Movies", "Hello Skinny", and their cover of "It's A
Man's Man's Man's World".
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 a psychedelic collage.
Many countries with local pop music industries soon copied the
trend towards promo film clips. In
Australia, promotional films by Australian pop
performers were being made on a regular basis by 1966; in 1968
singer
Lynne Randell featured in one
of the first promotional clips for an Australian act that was
filmed in colour, but most Australian clips from this period were
in black and white, due to the fact that Australia did not convert
to colour TV until early 1975.
In 1970–71, Australian musician and filmmaker
Chris Lofven made (monochrome) promotional
films for two of the biggest Australian hits of the period—
Daddy Cool's "Eagle Rock" and
Spectrum's "I'll Be Gone". These were widely
screened on Australian TV at the time and played a significant role
in the success of the songs, which both became national #1
hits.
The genre-defining
surf films of
Bruce Brown,
George
Greenough and
Alby Falzon and others
are also notable for their innovative combinations of image and
music featuring sequences of specially-filmed surfing footage,
carefully edited against long music tracks, with no accompanying
dialogue. Greenough's landmark 1972 film
Crystal Voyager concluded with an
extended sequence (filmed and edited by Greenough) that was
constructed around the 23-minute
Pink
Floyd track "
Echoes".
The band was impressed with Greenough's effort and agreed to allow
Greenough to use their music in his film in exchange for the right
to use his film footage when performing "Echoes" at their
concerts.
During late 1972–73
David Bowie featured
in a series of promotional films directed by pop photographer
Mick Rock, who worked extensively with
Bowie in this period. These clips are important landmarks in the
development of the music video genre in the 1970s, and they are
also notable because they were made by a professional photographer
rather than an established film or TV director, and because Rock
was given total creative control over the clips.
Mick Rock directed and edited four clips, all originally shot on
16 mm colour film, to promote four consecutive David Bowie
singles—"
John, I'm Only
Dancing" (May 1972), "
The Jean
Genie" (Nov. 1972), the December 1972 US re-release of
"
Space Oddity" and the 1973 release of
the single "Life On Mars" (lifted from Bowie's earlier album
Hunky Dory. Mick Rock cites the
"Life On Mars" clip as his favorite of the four.
- " 'Life On Mars' was the final in a quartet of 16mm promo films
I produced and directed for Bowie. 'John I'm Only Dancing', 'The
Jean Genie' and 'Space Oddity' were the other titles. In all cases
I waived any fee for their promotional usage. Nobody had any idea
at the time that people would one day pay money for such things.
Twenty years later these four promo films are featured in a
retrospective video package of tracks from Bowie's RCA years. In
truth, if I had solicited compensation, these films would not have
been made. Promos were not part of any regular budget and only
David and I were enthusiastic. DeFries
agreed to spring for the expenses to keep David happy and I got to
further my interest in film. The key for me was that, within the
confines of tiny budgets, I had total creative control. David was
happy to let me make all the shooting and editing decisions. What
was important to him was that they got made. As in all aspects of
his career, at this point, David exhibited uncannily prescient
instincts. It's important to note two special ingredients which
made Life On Mars such a memorable promo. The dazzling turquoise
suit made by longtime Bowie confidant and clothes designer Freddie Burretti (David never wore the suit
again), and the exquisite make up rendered by glammeister Pierre Laroche, the man who applied the
lighting bolt motif on Aladdin Sane."
The clip
for "John, I'm Only Dancing" was made with a budget of just US$200
and filmed at the afternoon rehearsal for Bowie's Rainbow
Theatre
concert on 19 August 1972. It shows Bowie
and band miming to the record (played over the Rainbow PA system)
intercut with footage of Bowie's dancers
The Astronettes dancing on stage and behind
a back-lit screen. The clip was turned down by the BBC, who
reportedly found the homosexual overtones of the film distasteful,
although
Top of the Pops replaced it with footage of
bikers and a dancer. The "Jean Genie" clip, produced for just
US$350, was shot in one day and edited in less than two days. It
intercuts footage of Bowie and band in concert with contrasting
footage of the group in a photographic studio, wearing black stage
outfits and standing agai`nst a white background. It also includes
location footage with Bowie and Cyrinda Foxe (a MainMan employee
and a friend of David and Angie Bowie) shot in San Francisco
outside the famous
Mars Hotel, with Fox
posing provocatively in the street while Bowie lounges against the
wall, smoking .
The Swedish music group,
ABBA also used promotional films
(most directed by
Lasse
Hallström) throughout the 1970s to promote their music
internationally.
1974–1980 – Beginnings of music television
Australia
The Australian TV shows
Countdown and
Sounds, both of which premiered in
1974, were significant in developing and popularizing the music
video genre in Australia and other countries, and in establishing
the importance of music video clips as a means of promoting both
emerging acts and new releases by established acts.
In early
1974, former radio DJ Graham Webb launched a
weekly teen-oriented TV music show which screened on Sydney
's ATN-7
on Saturday
mornings; this was renamed Sounds Unlimited in 1975 and
later shortened simply to Sounds. In need of
material for the show, Webb approached Seven newsroom staffer
Russell Mulcahy and asked him to
shoot film footage to accompany popular songs for which there were
no purpose-made clips (e.g.
Harry
Nilsson's "
Everybody's
Talking"). Using this method, Webb and Mulcahy assembled a
collection of about 25 clips for the show. The success of his early
efforts encouraged Mulcahy to quit his TV job and become a
full-time director, and he made clips for several popular
Australian acts including
Stylus,
Marcia Hines,
Hush and
AC/DC.
After relocating to the UK in the mid-1970s, Mulcahy made
successful music videos for several noted British pop acts—his
early UK credits included
XTC's "
Making Plans For Nigel" (1979) and
his landmark video for
The Buggles'
"
Video Killed The Radio
Star" (1979) which became the first music video played on
MTV in 1981.
Countdown was partly based on the 1960s Australian pop
show
Kommotion and on
the BBC's
Top of the Pops but unlike its British
counterpart,
Countdown was not restricted in its use of
music videos. The program was launched in late 1974, a few months
after
Sounds, and initially screened in a late Saturday
afternoon timeslot, but in January 1975, only a few weeks before
color TV was officially launched in Australia, it moved to the
prime 6 pm Sunday timeslot; thanks to the ABC's nationwide
reach, it rapidly became one of the highest-rating shows on
Australian TV.
As it gained popularity,
Countdown talent coordinator
Ian "Molly" Meldrum and producer
Michael Shrimpton quickly realized that
"film clips" were becoming an important new commodity in music
marketing. Despite the show's minuscule budget,
Countdown's original director
Paul
Drane was able to create several memorable music videos
especially for the show, including the classic film-clips for the
AC/DC hits "
It's A Long Way
To The Top" and "
Jailbreak".
Countdown became enormously successful in Australia and
other countries quickly picked up on the format. At its highpoint
during most of the 1980s it was to be aired in 22 countries
including TV Europe. In 1978, the Dutch TV-broadcasting company
Veronica started its own version of
Countdown, which
during the 1980s featured
Adam Curry as
its best known presenter.
Although the ABC's facilities and expertise enabled
Countdown to present regular studio 'performances' by
local and visiting acts, rival shows like
Sounds lacked
the resources to present such segments, so they at first used music
videos almost exclusively.
United Kingdom
The long-running British TV show
Top
of the Pops began playing music videos in the late 1970s,
although the
BBC placed strict limits on the
number of 'outsourced' videos TOTP could use. Therefore a good
video would increase a song's sales as viewers hoped to see it
again the following week. In 1980, David Bowie scored his first UK
number one in nearly a decade thanks to director
David Mallet's eye catching promo
for "
Ashes to
Ashes". Another act to succeed with this tactic was
Madness, who shot on 16 mm and
35 mm, constructing their clips as "micro-comedic" short
films.
In 1975, the band
Queen ordered
Bruce Gowers to make a promo video for
their new single "
Bohemian
Rhapsody" to show it in
Top Of The
Pops; this is also notable for being entirely shot and edited
on videotape.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" promotional
video.
The
Alan Parker film adaptation of
Pink Floyd The
Wall transformed the group's 1979 concept double-LP of the
same title into a confrontational and apocalyptic audio-visual
labyrinth of stylized, expressionistic images, sounds, melodies and
lyrics.
United States
American alternative rock group
Devo created
many self-produced music videos, which were included in the
pioneering compilation "The Truth About Devolution", directed by
Chuck Statler and Devo's video cassette releases were arguably
among the first true long-form video productions.Also,one of their
music videos "The Day My Baby gave me a Surprise" was the first to
use Computer and traditional animation.
Shock-rocker
Alice Cooper took a video
of his
Welcome to My
Nightmare concert showcasing the intense visual
performance it gave. Alice Cooper himself makes reference to making
one of the first music videos on the promotional videos for his
album
Along Came A
Spider.
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 artform.
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. Although it was a
commercial flop, 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
Russell's 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).
In 1980, New Zealand group
Split Enz had
major success with the single "I Got You" and the album
True Colours, and later that
year they joined
Blondie in becoming
one of the first bands in the world to produce a complete set of
promo clips for each song on the album (directed by their
percussionist,
Noel Crombie) and to
market these on video cassette. This was followed a year later by
the first American video album,
The Completion Backward
Principle by
The Tubes, directed
by the group's keyboard player
Michael
Cotten, which included two videos directed by Russell Mulcahy
("Talk To Ya Later" and "Don't Want To Wait Anymore").
Among the first music videos were clips produced by
ex-Monkee Michael
Nesmith who started making short musical films for
Saturday Night Live. 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).
Billboard credits the
independently-produced
Video Concert
Hall as being the first with nationwide video music programming
on American television.
1981–1991: Music videos go mainstream
In 1981,
the U.S.
video
channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and
beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With
this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the
mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing.
Many important acts of this period, most notably
Adam and the Ants, and
Madonna, owed a great deal of their
success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their
videos. Some academics have compared music video to
silent film, and it is suggested that stars like
Madonna have (often quite deliberately) constructed an image that
in many ways echoes the image of the great stars of the silent era
such as
Greta Garbo.
Two key innovations in the development of the modern music video
were the development of relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use
video recording and editing equipment, and the
development of a number of related effects such as
chroma-key. The advent of high-quality color
videotape recorders and portable video cameras coincided with the
DIY ethos of the
New Wave era ,
enabling 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.During the 1980s, music videos had become
de rigueur for most recording artists. The phenomenon that
was famously parodied by
BBC television comedy
program
Not The Nine
O'Clock News who produced a spoof music video "Nice Video,
Shame About The Song". The genre was also parodied by
Frank Zappa in his satirical 1984 song "Be In My
Video", and its increasing dominance was critiqued by
Joe Jackson in his 1980 song "Pretty
Boys".
In this period, directors and the acts they worked with began to
explore and expand the form and style of the genre, using more
sophisticated effects in their videos, mixing film and video, and
adding a storyline or plot to the music video. Occasionally videos
were made in a
non-representational form, in which the
musical artist was not shown. Because music videos are mainly
intended to promote the artist, such videos are comparatively rare;
two early 1980s examples are
Bruce
Springsteen's
Atlantic
City, directed by
Arnold
Levine, and
David
Mallet's video for
David Bowie and
Queen's "
Under Pressure". Other notable later examples
of the non-representational style include
Bill Konersman's innovative 1987 video for
Prince's "
Sign o' the Times" – influenced by
Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" clip, it featured only the
text of the song's lyrics—and the video for
George Michael's "
Freedom 90" (1990), in which Michael himself
refused to appear, forcing director
David
Fincher to substitute top fashion models in his place.
In 1983, the most successful and influential music video of all
time was released—the nearly 14-minute-long video for
Michael Jackson's song "
Thriller." The video set new
standards for production, having cost US$500,000 to film. That
video, along with earlier videos by Jackson for his songs "
Billie Jean" and "
Beat
It", also was instrumental in getting music videos by
African American artists played on MTV;
earlier, such videos were rare because MTV initially conceived
itself as a rock-music-oriented channel, although musician
Rick James was outspoken in his criticism of the
cable channel, claiming in 1983 that MTV's refusal to air the music
video for his song "Super Freak" and clips by other
African-American performers was "blatant racism".
The
Canadian
music channel MuchMusic
was launched in 1984.
In 1985, MTV launched the channel
VH1 (then
known as "VH-1: Video Hits One"), featuring softer music, and meant
to cater to an older demographic than MTV.
MTV Europe was launched in 1987, and
MTV Asia in 1991.
Another important development in music videos was the launch of
The Chart Show on the UK's
Channel 4 in 1986. This was a program
which consisted entirely of music videos (the only outlet many
videos had on British TV at the time ), without presenters.
Instead, the videos were linked by then state of the art
computer graphics. The show moved to
ITV in 1989.
In 1986,
Peter Gabriel's song
"
Sledgehammer" used special
effects and animation techniques developed by British studio
Aardman Animation. The video for
"Sledgehammer" would go on to be a phenomenal success and win nine
MTV Video Music Awards.
In 1988, the MTV show
Yo!
MTV Raps debuted; the show
helped to bring
hip hop music to a
mass audience for the first time.
1992–2004: Rise of the directors
In December 1992, MTV began listing
directors with the artist and song
credits, reflecting the fact that music videos had increasingly
become an
auteur's medium. Directors such as
Michel Gondry,
Spike Jonze,
Mark
Romanek and
Hype Williams all got
their start around this time; all brought a unique vision and style
to the videos they directed. Some of these directors, including,
Gondry, Jonze and
F. Gary Gray, went on to direct feature films.
This continued a trend that had begun earlier with directors such
as
Lasse Hallström and
David Fincher.
Two of the videos directed by Romanek in 1995 are notable for being
two of the three
most expensive music videos
of all time:
Michael and
Janet Jackson's "
Scream", which cost $7 million to produce,
and Madonna's "
Bedtime Story",
which cost $5 million. "Scream" remains the most expensive video of
all time.
During this period, MTV launched channels around the world to show
music videos produced in each local market:
MTV Latin America in 1993,
MTV India in 1996, and
MTV
Mandarin in 1997, among others.
MTV2,
originally called "M2" and meant to show more alternative and older
music videos, debuted in 1996.
2005–present: The Internet becomes video-friendly
The earliest purveyors of music videos on the internet were members
of
IRC-based groups , who
recorded them as they appeared on television, then digitised them,
exchanging the
.mpg files via IRC channels. The
website
iFilm, which hosted short videos,
including music videos, launched in 1997.
Napster, a
file sharing
service which ran between 1999 and 2001, enabled users to share
video files, including those for music videos.
By the mid-2000s, MTV and many of its sister channels had largely
abandoned showing music videos in favor of
reality television shows, which were more
popular with its audiences, and which MTV had itself helped to
pioneer with the show
The Real
World, which premiered in 1992.
2005 saw the release of the website
YouTube,
which made the viewing of online video faster and easier;
MySpace's video functionality, which uses similar
technology, launched in 2007. Such websites had a profound effect
on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success
as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online. The band
OK Go may exemplify this trend, having
achieved fame through the videos for two of their songs, "
A Million Ways" in 2005 and "
Here It Goes Again" in 2006, both of
which first became well-known online. Artists like
Soulja Boy Tell 'Em and
Marié Digby also achieved some level of
fame initially through videos released only online.
The 2008 video for
Weezer's "
Pork and Beans" also captured this
trend, by including at least 20
YouTube celebrities; the single became
the most successful of Weezer's career, in chart performance.
In 2007, the
RIAA issued cease-and-desist
letters to YouTube users to prevent single users from sharing
videos, which are the property of the music labels. After its
merger with
Google, YouTube assured the RIAA
that they would find a way to pay
royalties through a bulk agreement with the major
record labels. This was complicated by the fact that not all labels
share the same policy toward music videos: some welcome the
development and upload music videos to various online outlets
themselves, viewing music videos as free
advertising for their artists, while other
labels view music videos not as an advertisement, but as the
product itself.
MTV itself now provides streams of artists' music videos, while
AOL's recently launched AOL Music features a
vast collection of advertising supported streaming videos. The
Internet has become the primary growth income market for record
company-produced music videos.
At its launch, Apple
's iTunes Store provided a section of free music
videos in high quality compression to be watched via the iTunes
application. More recently the iTunes Store has begun
selling music videos for use on Apple's
iPod
with video playback capability.
Official Lo-fi Internet music clips
Following the shift toward internet broadcasting and the rising
popularity of user-generated video sites such as
YouTube around 2006, some
independent filmmakers began
recording live sessions to present on the Web. Examples of this new
way of creating and presenting a music video include
Vincent Moon's work with
The Take-Away Shows;
In the Van sessions, a similar platform;
and the Dutch
VPRO 3VOOR12, which puts out music videos recorded in
elevators and other small,
guerrilla filmmaking type locations in
a similar tradition called
closed
doors. All of these swiftly recorded clips are made with
minimal budgets and share similar aesthetics with the
lo-fi music movement of the early nineties.
Offering freedom from the increasingly burdensome financial
requirements of high-production movie-like clips, it began as the
only method for little-known
indie music
artists to present themselves to a wider audience, but increasingly
this approach has been taken up by such major mainstream artists as
R.E.M. and
Tom
Jones.
Censorship
As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic
expression, artists have been on many occasions censored if their
content is deemed offensive. What may be considered offensive will
differ in countries due to censorship laws and local customs and
ethics. In most cases, the record label will provide and distribute
videos edited or provide both censored and uncensored videos for an
artist. In some cases, it has been known for music videos to be
banned in their entirety as they have been deemed far too offensive
to be broadcast.
1980s
The first video to be banned by
MTV was
Queen's 1982 hit "
Body Language." Due to thinly
veiled homoerotic undertones plus lots of skin and lots of sweat
(but apparently not enough clothing, save that worn by the fully
clothed members of Queen themselves), it was deemed unsuitable for
a television audience at the time. However, the channel did air
Olivia Newton-John's 1981 video
for the hit song "
Physical", which lavished
camera time on male models working out in string bikinis who spurn
her advances, ultimately pairing off to walk to the men's locker
rooms holding hands, though the network ended the clip before the
overt homosexual "reveal" ending in some airings. The video for
"
Girls on Film" by
Duran Duran, which featured topless women mud
wrestling and other depictions of sexual fetishes, was banned by
the
BBC. MTV did air the video, albeit in a
heavily edited form.
Laura Branigan
initially protested an MTV request to edit her "
Self Control" video in 1984, but
relented when the network refused to air the
William Friedkin-directed clip, featuring
the singer lured through an increasingly debauched, if increasingly
stylized, series of nightclubs by a masked man who ultimately takes
her to bed. In 1989,
Cher's "
If I Could Turn Back Time" video
(where the singer performs the song in an extremely revealing body
suit surrounded by a ship full of cheering sailors) was restricted
to late-night broadcasts on MTV.
The Sex
Pistols' video for "God Save the Queen"
was banned by the BBC for calling the United Kingdom
a fascist regime.
Mötley Crüe's video for
"
Girls, Girls, Girls" was
banned by MTV for having completely nude women dancing around the
members of the band in a strip club.
Mötley Crüe did make another version
of the video that was accepted by MTV.
In 1983,
Entertainment
Tonight ran a segment on censorship and "Rock Video
Violence." The episode explored the impact of
MTV rock video violence on the youth of the early 1980s.
Excerpts from the music videos of
Michael Jackson,
Duran Duran,
Kiss,
Kansas,
Billy
Idol,
Def Leppard,
Pat Benatar and
The Rolling Stones were shown. Dr. Thomas
Radecki of the National Coalition on TV Violence was interviewed
accusing the fledgling rock video business of excessive violence.
Night Tracks producer Tom
Lynch weighed in on the effects of the video violence controversy.
Recording artists
John Cougar
Mellencamp,
Gene Simmons and
Paul Stanley of Kiss, along with
directors Dominic Orlando and
Julien
Temple, provided a defense of their work. The episode's
conclusion was that the controversy will continue to grow.
Some artists have used censorship as a publicity tool. In the
1980s, the show
Top of the Pops was censorious in its
approach to video content, so some acts made videos that they knew
would be censored, using the resulting public controversy to
promote their release. Examples of this tactic were
Duran Duran's aforementioned "Girls on Film" and
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
with "Relax", directed by Bernard Rose.
1990s
In 1991, the dance segment of
Michael
Jackson's "
Black or White"
was cut because it showed Michael Jackson "inappropriately"
touching himself in it. Michael Jackson's most controversial video,
"
They Don't Care About Us"
was banned from MTV, VH1, and BBC because of the alleged
anti-Semitic message in the song and the
visuals in the background of the "Prison Version" of the
video.
Also in 1991, emerging country music superstar
Garth Brooks found himself at the center of
controversy when his video for "
The
Thunder Rolls" was banned by both
The Nashville Network (TNN) and
Country Music Television
(CMT). The video dealt with the issue of domestic violence in stark
visual terms, and featured a heavily-costumed Brooks portraying an
abusive husband. Although both Brooks and director
Bud Schaetzle publicly denied that the video
was crafted specifically to foster debate, its banning shed light
on Nashville's conservative programming practices and brought
attention to Brooks' developing sense of showmanship. In the wake
of the video's critical acclamation, and with public support
generated by nationwide "viewing parties" organized by supportive
radio stations, TNN and CMT reluctantly began airing it. "
The Thunder Rolls" went on to win the
Video of the Year Award from the
Country Music Association, and was
named by both
MTV and CMT as one of the "100
Greatest Music Videos Ever Made."
Madonna is the artist most
associated with music video censorship. The controversy surrounding
her marketing of sexuality began with the video for "
Lucky Star", and amplified over time due
to clips such as "
Like a Virgin".
Outcry occurred over the subject matter discussed in "
Papa Don't Preach". "
Like a Prayer" courted heavy criticism due to
its religious, sexual, and racially-oriented imagery.
In 1990, Madonna's music video for the song "
Justify My Love" was banned by MTV due to
its depiction of
sadomasochism,
homosexuality,
cross-dressing, and
group sex which generated a media firestorm.
The
debate over the banning of "Justify My Love" by the Canadian music
video network MuchMusic
led to the launching in 1991 of Too Much 4 Much, a series of
occasional, late-night specials (still being aired in the early
2000s) in which videos officially banned by MuchMusic were
broadcast, followed by panel discussion regarding why they were
removed.
In 1992,
The Shamen's video for the song
"
Ebeneezer Goode" was banned by the
BBC due to its perceived subliminal endorsement
of the recreational drug
Ecstasy.
Prodigy's 1997 video for "
Smack My Bitch Up" was banned in some
countries due to depictions of drug use and nudity. The Prodigy's
video for "
Firestarter" was
banned by the
BBC because of its references to
arson.
2000s
In 2000, the music video for "
Rock
DJ" by
Robbie Williams caused
controversy due to the graphic nature of the video which featured
Robbie Williams appearing naked and peeling off his skin to reveal
flesh. The video was censored in the UK and was only once broadcast
uncensored at 2:00 AM.
The video was banned in Dominican
Republic
due to allegations of satanism.
Björk's 2001 song, "
Pagan Poetry", was banned from MTV for
depictions of sexual intercourse, fellatio, and body piercings. Her
next single, "
Cocoon", was also banned by MTV
as it featured a nude Björk.
Madonna's video for "
Erotica" was
aired only three times (each time after midnight) due to its sexual
depictions of
sadomasochism. More
recently, Madonna's "
What
It Feels Like for a Girl" was banned in 2001 due to its graphic
depiction of violence. She also pulled her "
American Life" video because of its
controversial military imagery that seemed inappropriate once the
War in Iraq began;
subsequently, a new video was made for the song.
In 2002, the video for "
All The
Things She Said" by Russian duo
t.A.T.u. caused controversy as it featured the
young girls,
Lena Katina and
Yulia Volkova, embracing and eventually
kissing. UK TV presenters Richard and Judy campaigned to have the
video banned claiming it pandered to pedophiles with the use of
school uniforms and young girls kissing, although the campaign
failed. Capitalizing on the controversy, the kiss was choreographed
into their live performances.
Top of the Pops aired the
girls' performance with the kiss replaced by audience footage.
NBC's
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno cut away from the
girls' kiss to shots of the band. Throughout their promotional
tour, t.A.T.u. protested by appearing in shirts reading
"censored".
As of 2005, the Egyptian state censorship committee has banned at
least 20 music videos which featured sexual connotations due to
Muslim moral viewpoints. In 2004, many family groups and
politicians lobbied for the banning of the
Eric Prydz video "
Call on Me" for containing
women dancing in an sexually suggestive way, however, the video was
not banned. At some point in the past, the video for "
AINT" by
Marilyn
Manson was banned by that artist's label due to its violence
and sexual content.
In 2008, Justice's video for their song
"Stress" was boycotted by several major music television channels
due to allegations of racism and violence; the video depicts
several youths committing various crimes throughout the streets of
Paris
, with the youths mainly being of North African descent.
Unofficial music videos
Unofficial, fan-made music videos ("bootleg" tapes) are typically
made by synchronizing existing footage from other sources, such as
television series or movies, with the song. The first known fan
video, or
songvid, was created by Kandy Fong
in 1975 using still images from
Star Trek loaded into a
slide carousel and played in conjunction with a song. Fan videos
made using
videocassette
recorders soon followed. With the advent of easy distribution
over the internet and cheap video-editing software, fan-created
videos began to gain wider notice in the late 1990s.
Such videos are sometimes known as OPV, Original Promotional Videos
(or sometimes Other People's Videos). In the case of
anime music videos, the source material is
drawn from Japanese
anime or from American
animation series. Since neither the music nor the film footage is
typically licensed, distributing these videos is usually
copyright infringement on both
counts. A well-known example of an unofficial video include one
made for
Danger Mouse's illegal
mash-up of the
Jay-Z track "Encore" with music sampled from The
Beatles' White Album, in which concert footage of The Beatles is
remixed with footage of Jay-Z and rap dancers.
In 2007, a new form of
lip sync-based music
video called
lip dub became popular in which
a group of people are filmed lip singing in a seemingly random spot
then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the
song. These videos have the feeling of being spontaneous and
authentic and are spread virally through mass participatory video
sites like
YouTube.
Music video stations
Here are some of the most popular music video stations from around
the world:
Music video shows
See also
Footnotes
- An example of one of these shorts can be found on youtube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBo98gjikxQ
- Clarke, pg. 39
- Music Video Database - "Material Girl"
- Film Encyclopedia - "Dance: From Musicals
To Music Videos"
- Roger Ebert - Review of A Hard Day's Night
(Sun Times, 27 Oct. 1996)
- Music Video Database
- Music Video Database - Peter Goldman
- Dave Emlen's Kinks Website - Kinks Music Videos
- Music Video Database - The Rolling Stones
- Music Video Database - "We Love You"
- The Ziggy Stardust Companion - "John I'm Only
Dancing"
- The Ziggy Stardust Companion - "The Jean
Genie"
- Dino Scatena: "Clip go the years", Sydney
Morning Herald, 26 Feb. 2005
- IMDb: Russell Mulcahy
- mvdbase.com - Russell Mulcahy
- mvdbase.com - Prince
- Michael Jackson - Thriller - AVRev.com
- BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Thrills and spills and record
breaks
- Why it took MTV so long to play black music
videos, Jet, October 9, 2006
- Peter Gabriel | Music Artist | Videos, News, Photos
& Ringtones | MTV
- http://www.vimeo.com/album/51538
- http://3voor12.vpro.nl/dossiers/dossier/21200079
-
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/19/takeaway.shows/index.html
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/top5/drug_songs.shtml
-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/features/top5/banned_songs.shtml
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/979461.stm
- http://www.freemuse.org/sw9979.asp
- Justice - Stress | Music | guardian.co.uk
Music
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External links