Thursday, 3 September 2015

History of Music Videos

Music promos first started to become popular during the 1960's with the Beatles releasing "A Hard Day's Night" in 1964. This video established the conventions of music promos, by showing the band as the main focus, by the band acting and through the use of cutting to the beat. This therefore set the benchmark for future music promos.



In 1975, Queen released "Bohemian Rhapsody" which was. At the start of the video, the four band members heads are under a spotlight and are positioned in a diamond formation. The video then goes on to show alive performance by the band. In this scene, special effects are used, as they were new advances in technology, and it showed one clip fading out and another fading in on top to create an overlap of the two clips. Further on in the clip, we see the band members under a spotlight again, however, a mirror special effect is used to duplicate the members for the high pitch parts. These improved special effects improved the experience for the audience. Furthermore, this was the first music promo to be available for free on TV. 



In 1980, David Bowie released "Ashes To Ashes" which was the most expensive music video made at the time, costing £250,000. The video was so expensive due to it's heavy use of special effects, lighting and setting. The use of these helped to create a very visual reference to the romantic movement.


                                                                                                By 1981, MTV was released, it was a 24 hour music channel that featured artists music videos and showed them to the masses. This was a good way for artists to promote themselves and their new single. This therefore, made the use of music promotions very important and key in the succession of the bands, as audiences were fascinated by them and they enjoyed watching them. MTV was an important new programme as it established music channels.


Michael Jackson 'Thriller' was released in 1983 and it is one of the most famous and memorable music videos ever created. The video used the idea of narrative to express the lyrics. The use of the narrative and horror made it a very controversial video which gave it a lot of attention. The video features choreographed dancing, extreme costume and settings, totalling to around £1 million to create.


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