HISTORY OF MUSIC VIDEOS Harvey Coltman

EARLY STAGES The first real music video is said to have been created by Tony Bennett in 1956 where he was filmed walking down past the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. The recording was then put over his song ‘Stranger in paradise’. With the oldest example of a promotional music video being ‘Lets get to the apartment’ directed by Ladislav Rychman in 1958.

THE 1960’S The Beatles were starred in their first feature film in 1964 called A Hard Days Night which was directed by Richard Lester and shot in black and white. Help! Was the Beatles second feature in 1965 being a much more extravagant film as it was filmed in colour. Making it one of the first known colour music videos and one which has inspired many more to this day.

1970’S In 1974, the first music television programmes became available on tv allowing viewers to tune in a watch different music videos. Australians Countdown and Sounds were the first two and were very important in promoting new acts and their releases.

1980’S The 1980’s was a period in time where music videos started to go mainstream and become a lot more well known. In 1981 the world famous MTV channel was launched in the U.S and was the start of an era of 24 hour a day music on television. Because of this by the mid 1980’s music videos had become an extremely important role in music video marketing. Many artists during this period including Duran Duran and Madonna gained huge success due to their well created music videos. In 1993, one of the most successful music videos of all time was released. Thriller by Michael Jackson which lasts for 14 minutes and is said to have cost $800k to produce.

1990’S The 1990’s was a time period where directors started to become more relevant. MTV started to list director names with the artist and song credits which started gaining popularity for directors such as Chris Cunningham and Hype Williams. Furthermore, during this time Billboard had now started to have its own music video awards.

2000’S From 2005 onwards the internet became very friendly with music videos with the launch of the biggest video platform site YouTube. Making the uploading and viewing of all videos extremely straight forward and easy allowing many more people to view them. This created a lot more popularity for artists and is a key to many peoples successes.