Significant moments in music videos.

Gramophone.

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the gramophone.

For the first time, this allowed people to play music at home, and people didn’t have to go to the theatre to hear music.

The Gold-diggers.

In 1993, an elaborate production was made, involving choreography, and was recorded onto a film.

This allowed people to see a big production on the cinema screen.

It also idealised glamour in the depression era.

Alexander Nevsky.

In 1938, a score was composed by Sergei Prokofiev, for Sergei Eisenstein, a Soviet Russia, propaganda film-maker.

This was the first time a soundtrack had been specially commissioned.

It was the first video that set action to music.

Fantasia.

In 1940, Disney released what is arguably the first music video.

The cartoon was made specifically to go with the music.

At the time, Walt Disney was trying to get his audience interested classical music. However, it wasn’t very successful when it was originally released, and was later seen as a ‘forgotten classic’.

Ready Steady Go!

From August 1963, until December 1966, Ready Steady Go! was broadcast on ITV.

Up until 1964, artists mimed to records. However, in late 1964, some artists were performing live, until in April 1965, all the artists performed live.

Artists went on the show in order to sell themselves and their music.

The miming gave the illusion of a performance.

Eventually, record companies began to see the potential in the commodification of a band’s image for TV.

A Hard Day’s Night

In 1963, the director Richard Lester made a promo film for The Beatles.

The Beatles play themselves in a spoof, with a mixture of narrative and performance.

There was a light hearted comedic approach to it.

Top Of The Pops. It was made by the BBC, and was originally

broadcast weekly between 1st January and 30th July 2006.

It was originally where people could find out what was number 1.

It was a way of record companies selling their artists as they would try and get their artists on there.

If it wasn’t possible to get an artist on the show, a recording of the artist performing elsewhere would be shown, or the song would be played and Pans People would be filmed dancing around the studio.

In order to get the band on commercial programmes, more and more music videos were being made.

MTV.

In 1981, MTV began, and it was the first and only TV station which was dedicated to music. The music was guided by VJs.

Popular culture was impacted massively, along with the music industry.

MTV helped contribute to the importance of the music video.

As increasingly more music video channels and the internet became available, it impacted massively upon MTV, and their content was diversified.

Thriller: Michael Jackson.

In 1983, Thriller was released and was the landmark of merging filmmaking and music videos.

It is often seen as the most commercially successful music video of all time.

It lasted for 14 minutes long and therefore broke the stereotypical 3.5 minutes long music videos.

It was screened after the watershed.

It featured famous horror actor Vincent Price.

Sledgehammer: Peter Gabriel

This music video was a big experiment with stop-motion and animation.

Gabriel lied under a glass sheet for 16 hours, due to the video being shot frame by frame.

An advance in technology was shown through this video.

Beyoncé.

Beyoncé released her 5th album in 2014.

However, she released it entirely through music videos.

There was no promotion, no teasers or press releases before hand.

The music videos were released before the physical CD copy.

However, this limited her audience only to people who had access to the internet.