Planning-History Of Music Videos

Firstly i found it vital to research music videos and how they started. This would then lead me to the development of music videos over the years to see the purpose and reasons behind making music videos.

The earliest records of a music video being made where from a company called Vitaphone which were produced by Warner Brothers. Around the 1930s these videos featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. The videos, once known as shorts, where around 6 minutes in duration and typically featured art deco style animations and backgrounds combined with film of the performer singing the song. 
Here is an example of an early music video


Around the 1940s music videos started being produced as one song films called 'promotional clips' for the panoram visual jukebox. Thousands of these were made and mainly for the genre of jazz.

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. In 1964 there seemed to be a breakthrough as 'the animals' song was made into a high quality colour clip. Videos began to be made in specially built sets and editing with tracking shots, close ups and long shots. 

From the 1960s onward there was an onset with many different bands wanting to have a music video produced and plots were started to be developed for the videos to accompany the songs and lyrics. These promotional clips began to rapidly grow in importance as bands and artists wanted to find something new to set them apart from the others. 

It was not until 1974 that music videos where given a program on TV which was devoted to showing them. DJ Graham Webb launched a weekly teen-oriented TV music show which screened on Sydney's ATN-7 on Saturday mornings. This then led to many other programs such as BBC's 'top of the pops' which was very successful.

Following this there where Channels launched solely for showing music videos. MTV launched in 1981 and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. This raised the significance of a song having a video as the next new thing was around the clock music to watch. This is when music videos where made main steam.

Currently there are many different music channels which have branched out into set genres. Also now music videos have reached a demand on the Internet with the rise of sites such as youtube. Music videos now are made to promote the video and for advertising purposes, along with making the song more appealing. From the 1930s onwards technology has increase and with this the desire to make a music video has. There has been a definite shift in the patterns of music as in the 1930s it was rare for a music video to be made, whereas now it can be said to be rare for a song to be release and not be able to find a music video to accompany it, either on the Internet or music channels.