The history of the music video...

Hi people!

We recently watched a video in class concerning the history of the music video. We were all astonished at how over publicised videos have now become compared to what their original purpose was.

So here goes...

In 1923, Hitler released 'Mein Kamf', which was one of the original vidoes with intergrated sound. Then, in 1950 came the first colour music videos.

In 1955, songs from musicals were released as individual songs with music videos. By 1967, Top of the Pops hit the scene, which catapulted music into the foreground of television. Music videos were made for bands who were not available to perform live on the show. However, these days it seems complusory to make a video whether you're available or not.

In 1975, VCRs became available to buy in shops. At this time, Queen also made their video for 'Bohemian Rapsody'. The reason behind this video was that it was too complex to perform live. It took only 3 hours to film and the total budget for that time was approximately £3,500.

1980 brought the New Romanticism era. In 1981, Mike Nesmith created MTV (or music television). The first video played on the 24hour music channel was 'Video Killed The Radio Star'. MTV soon became available in 300million homes worldwide. However, it was soon known as 'Mpty' TV because of the lack of music videos being created at this time. Some videos were repeated many times over to fill the space.

Tim Pope was soon to emerge as a popular director. He was the first of his kind not to use artists conventionally in his videos; by this we mean that the artists in the video were not necessarily performing/ singing along to the song.

In 1985 CDs were available to buy in shops. During this period, MTV started to make an income. 'Wild Boys' became the most exspensive video of its time. Also, Boy George and Frankie Goes to Hollywood began to promote homosexuality and dressing as drag queens performing in music videos. George Michael was criticised for creating videos that were too sexy in nature.

Because of the amount of videos now being created, artists became more popular as individuals and started to be noticed when out in public.

The 80s also saw computer graphics and animations being used to create music videos. At this particular time however, such videos were seen to be overly ambitious.

Before long, Michael Jackson became King of the music video. In 1983, he had the 'greatest' album of all time, which was 'Thriller', featuring songs such as 'Billie Jean' and 'Beat It'. 'Thriller' was known as a turning point for Jackson.

John Landis was the director for the 'Thriller' video; he wanted a story, plot and character set up. Jackson's record company however, did not believe that the video would be a success so would not give him financial support. This created no real problem though, as they sold a 'making of' the video, which raised enough funds for 'Thriller'. This video now overtook 'Wild Boys' and became the new most expensive video of all time. 'Thriller' tripled album sales.

At the moment, the most expensive music video existing is 'From Yesterday' by 30 Seconds To Mars, costing $13million.

I LOVE YOU MICHAEL JACKSON :)

bysie byee xxxxxxx