History of Music Videos

• Contrary to popular belief the first music video was not Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', but goes back to forty years earlier with the experiments of Oscar Fischinger in 1920s Germany and in 1930s America. He worked on visual interpretations for tracks and later the Disney film Fantasia (1939). An end title was also displayed informing the audience of the track name and with suggestions to buy it 'at your local record store'. This was an early example of advertising.

The Panarom:

• Short films also rose to prominence, with the purpose of showcasing artists, through the two ton Panarom featuring a twenty inch screen with black projection. They were popular in their time and became a feature in juke joints and bars, showcasing a large variety of music.
• The short films were often more daring sexually and sometimes politically daring, as the were less likely to checked by the censors. This sexualisation of women has can still be seen as part of popular culture today.
• The machine contained a reel of eight shorts which were set to play in sequence. The 16 mm films known as 'soundies' were produced in thousands between 1939-46 it its peak, however the Panarom died out quickly after the war.

The Scopitone:

• In the 1960s in France, a similar product one more rose to prominence. The machine provided a individual selection of colour content, play and rewind for 36 short films. The consumer had more freedom with the product in comparison with the Panarom.
• Another early form of music and video combination as they were mainly song and dance performances shot cheaply on stages or outdoors.
• The machine was a huge success in France, before being adopted by the USA. By mid-1965, around 1000 machines were installed.
• American films tended to be made by the company Harman-ee and cost an average of $8000 to make.
• As with the French films, overtly sexual content predominated, often bordering on pornography. Again the roots of sexualisation in the music video industry can be seen. This form was also short lived.
• As the new rock music of the late 60s became the music taste of the youth audiences, Harman-ee began shooting films with bands such as Procul Harum but the dominant content was that of pop.
• Competition from television was too high and the Scopitone died out at the end of the 1960s.

Musical Feature Film:

• Including the setpiece production numbers in films from 'The Jazz Singer' (Crosland, 1927) through the lavish musicals of the 1940s and on to the beginnings of the rock n' roll movie such as Little Richard's appearance in 'The Girl Can't Help It' (Tashlin, 1956) can all be seen to have influenced the style of the music video.
• In the films of Elvis Presley, placing the star in a variety of fictional contexts, notably 'Jailhouse Rock' (Thorpe, 1957) and British imitations such as Cliff Richard with 'Summer Holiday' (Yates, 1963) and 'The Young Ones' (Furie, 1961) show clear roots for later music videos.
• An additional dimension emerged in the 1960s from The Beatles' 'A Hard Days Night' (Lester, 1964) onwards, with the rock movie using stylistic devices borrowed from both documentary and the French Nouvelle Vague.

Television:

• Television coverage of pop music attempted to capture the new teenage audience in the US from 'American Bandstand' in the 1950s through to the UK with 'Top of the Pops' in the 1960s. The need to have musical acts on TV every week, particularly for chart-based shows, led to the creation of short promo films often used in place of a studio appearance, especially when acts were on tour.
• Beatles clips for 'Penny Lane' and Strawberry Fields Forever' not only provided material to save them appearing on 'Top of the Pops' in person but also signalled a shift for them from being a touring band to studio recording artists. The other major British acts of the 1960s, such as the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who, also recorded promos.
• The Monkees, an American answer to The Beatles, also used many devices which would later find their way into music promos such as surrealism, jump cuts, wacky comedy and lots of action mixed in with music performance by the band. The four band members were selected for how they would look on TV, a device which has become even more familiar with the creation of boy bands in the 1990s right through to shows such as 'Popstars' and 'Pop Idol' at the start of the 21st century.
• Former Monkee Mike Nesmith had the idea of creating a promo based programme for Nickelodeon, 'Pop Clips' which he then touted with Warner Brothers with the grander aim of filling an entire network with music video. The only cost to the channel was royalties for airplay and the concept quickly became attractive to advertisers making it potentially very profitable.

Music Television (MTV):

• MTV began broadcasting on the Warner satellite feed in 1981 in America. For the first few years British bands took advantage of this new medium in order to break into the American market. Notable successes were Duran Duran with their high budget sexy and lavish videos shot on location and The Eurythmics with their often surreal narratives, particularly 'Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This'.
• The growth of MTV in the USA was rapid. In the early years, however, assumptions about the demographics of the audience led to dominance by white acts and a preponderance of male rock. Despite the success of the huge budgeted productions of Michael Jackson 'Thriller' (Landis, 1983) it was almost the end of the decade before any other black artists' work broke through.
• Reluctance to play black videos merely ensured that rap videos were only able to acquire very small budgets and tended to be distributed through alternative means, not finding a mass audience. Gangsta rap was seen as enormously threatening to the white audience and it was only through using crossover in the shape of Run DMC and Aerosmith's 'Walk this Way' (1986) and later the humour of the work of MC Hammer and Coolio that rap could become acceptable and eligible for bigger budget videos.
• Hype Williams led the way for black artists and black directors through his extravagant productions for the likes of TLC, R. Kelly and Missy Elliott, by the late 90s commanding budgets of $2 million. These higher budget videos in turn generated record sales and led to Hip Hop effectively replacing rock as the dominant music form.
• Gradually 'serious' rock acts realised the importance of music video and by the time Bruce Springsteen, the ultimate in 'authenticity' amongst rock artists of the time, released his first videos, such as 'Dancing in the Dark' (DePalma, 1984), it was clear that there was no alternative.
• The form had also started to propel some acts to mega stardom, bypassing the traditional route of live performance. Madonna demonstrated this well. She led a host of female artists whose rise to prominence, whose talents had been showcased by the availability of music video. Image, performance, choreography and the use of the close up have suited the success of female acts in particular.
• By 1984, MTV was established as central to the music business and instituted its own version of the Oscars, the Video Music Awards (VMA).
• Some directors moved from music video to feature films, using video almost as a training ground for Hollywood or independent production.
• By the mid 80s, MTV, now owned by Viacom, a major media conglomerate, but one without significant interests in a record company, had diversified, with the establishment of the more album-oriented VH1 for the older audience. The launch of the European version of MTV in 1987 led to a swift acceleration in the number of subscribers eager to get the same benefits as their American counterparts. Viacom was responsible for the shift away from the narrow rock video market towards a wider range of music genres, eventually including rap and indie, also succeeding in bringing MTV to the major cities where it had previously not been available and developing more conventional scheduling, beginning to produce programmes other than video clip compilations, giving a much greater sense of a 'lifestyle'.
• The concert programme 'Unplugged', where artists performed stripped down versions of their hits, usually with acoustic guitar, led to a series of successful CD releases.
• This was followed by Television's obsession with 'reality' programming; The Real World, which followed the lives of a group of young people brought together to share an apartment. MTV later introduced the 'satirical' cartoon characters 'Beavis and Butthead', which became an important element in attracting younger male viewers to stay tuned longer to the channel rather than 'hopping' to the available alternatives. More recently this diversification has spawned further successes with The Osbournes and Jackass, placing MTV as a leader in innovative programming in a range of youth-orientated genres.

Reference:

Pete Fraser, Teaching Music Video, (BFI, 2004)