music video timeline

1929

One of the earliest examples of a music video is that of Bessie Smith's St. Louis Blues. It is shot in a restaurant, in St. Louis, where Bessie smith is singing to a crowd of people whilst they enjoy their evening meals. The video consists of lots of mid and far away shots, not many close ups. i imagine this is because it was a live environment and people would feel uncomfortable with having a camera pointed to them when they are eating. Unlike those of today the video was shown in theatres in 1932 three years after it was shot. Due to the change in technologies we are now able to make and access music videos in a much faster way.

1956

Tony Bennett - Stranger in Paradise was filmed in Hyde Park and was played across both the UK ans US, on national television. It has been claimed that this was the first music video to be played on television which has then lead to the creation of stations like MTV and BOX dedicated to music videos.

1967

The Beatles managed to change music forever by releasing their music video for their song Penny Lane, here they introduced codes conventions all that modern post production teams know today, these were things such as dramatic lighting, rhythmic editing and unusual camera angles.

1970

The history of music videos changed dramatically in the 1970's, it saw more emphasis being made on the artist and band rather than the surrounding audience. this lead to cross cutting and narrative or performance narrative that conveys the lyrics of the song.

1981

Mtv was created. The first video it aired was Video killed the radio star.it was a real break-through in the evolution of music videos and as you can see it was a very high-budget video in which we can see more development in editing such as "Over-laying". MTV was responsible for the success of artists like Madonna as it played a central role as marketing.

NOW

Music videos now are so common it is hard to find something that hasn't been done before. Artists try to make their videos more ascetically pleasing, using tons of visual effects, lighting and unique scenery. Music videos have to match the genre of the music video for them to be suitable and not look odd. The adoption of the Sex appeal dominates today's music videos, focusing lots on the male gaze theory.