History of music videos

Music videos have a whole range of styles that is the same styles as filming techniques including the following:
*Animation

*Live action

*Documentaries

* Abstract film

Also there are three main categories of music video:
*Narrative- In which is where the video tells a story and the lyrics are often related to the story. The artists themselves may be an actor/actress. 

*Performance- The artist produces a performance whilst singing the song, this is very common. The video may include a recording of a live performance or edited and constructed the performance.

*Abstract- This is where the video features an abstract analysis of the music, the artist may not appear in the music video.

The Beatles produced a music video, A Hard Day’s Night in 1964. This was very popular as it was also in a film, then the Beatles were international superstars. The Beatles were the craze in the 60’s. They represented an image which got them very successful.

In the year 1981 in the United States a channel was launched by the name of MTV, and this channel was 24 hour on music television. The beginning of the launch they kicked of the channel with ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, being a very popular song back in the 80’s.

Throughout that 1980’s, MTV extended and became an important device in which was used within the music marketing. In the 80’s is when the actual term ‘music video’ came into popular usage. As MTV was getting so many viewings and become immense, the public referred music videos as MTV’s.  

When music videos were produced in the 80’s they were made so that an artist could promote their image to the public, such a Madonna. At this point in history, the best, influential and unbeaten music video was Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. Music videos were being made into stories, Thriller being the most interesting and appealing as the video was fourteen minutes long.

From the videos above, Thriller and A Hard Day’s Night, you can tell that technology has improved throughout the years. Colour on camera was invented, so there was no need to film in black and white, but not necessary the genre of music, in the era between with 60’s and 80’s. Nowadays music is all about image and performance. More and more films are including soundtrack, which allow the artist that produces the song become more famous, good example being The Beatles and most recent Miley Cyrus. The majority of music videos that are linked with the films soundtrack often show short clips of the film itself.  Nowadays MTV are not showing certain music videos because they are containing too much sex, such as Lady Ga Ga’s Telephone. Also unofficial music videos are now being shown, following with competitions to make artists or bands to get signed to a record label.

The CHANGE in images throughout the years:

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