Today I watched the documentary "Video Killed the Radio Star" which gave a review over the history of the music video. The precursors to the music video were acts such as Judie Garland in the 1940s and 50s performing the IGM Musicals.
Iconic music videos include "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol, Marylyn Manson's self-assassination in one of his music videos, "Virgin" by Madonna, "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley and "Thriller" by Michael Jackson.
We have to remember that MTV did not make the music video; instead they were the ones who just broadcasted it and made it more famous. In 1923 The Talkies released their first attempt at a music video, many people were opposed to the music video because they said that a film and music did not go well together and instead it just looked like a short film. And in fact this is exactly what the Beetles had aimed to do with their music video "Strawberry Fields."
In 1950 there was the First colour video and in 1955 James Dean, who was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations, killed in a car crash. The Top of The Pops was made in the late 60s by the BBC and all of this had already happened before the first ever heart transplant was carried out, in 1967.
In 1975 the first VCR was sold in shops and Queen also released their song "Bohemian Rhapsody." The whole music video was shot in 3 hours on a £3,500 budget with Bruce Gowers as the director. They didn't have the technology that we had today and used a kaleidoscope effect on the lens for some of the shots, making it hard to perform and re-inact the music video live yet the band were keen to make their album cover come to life. There are many inter textual reference to the Opera - Galileo and "lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro and Bismillah, as rival factions fight over the narrator's soul. Peraino calls the sequence both a "comic courtroom trial and a rite of passage ... one chorus prosecutes, another defends, while the hero presents himself as meek though wily." The song's introduction is recalled with the chromatic side-slipping on 'I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me.'" - Wikipedia.
In 1985 John Lennon was murdered and David Bowie released the song "Ashes to Ashes" with the Blitz kids, they also used a negative effect in filming and had a £5,000 budget. Duran Duran then released "Planet Earth" and critics explained that they didn't like musicians to play roles because they were not actors. We can see this in more recent music videos such as Robbie Williams' video "Millennium" was based on a James Bond theme; artists had now also started making cameo appearances in one another's music videos, Fatboy Slim is often known for doing this.
Mike Nesmith from the Monkies made MTV; in 1977 he split form the monkeys to make "Rio" but not only was he a part of music videos, he collected them. Mike wanted to make a channel where music videos were shown 24 hours a day but he got rejected from many places with their excuse being that it wasn't appropriate. He then took his idea the Warner Amerit where they had an empty broadcast satellite channel, so he made 'Pop Clips.' A Video Jockey (VJ) is an announcer who introduces and plays videos on commercial music television such as the United States, in this case MTV. The first global MTV broadcast was in 1985 where the advert of MTV going to the moon was included which is still used today. "Video killed the Radio Star" was the first music video shown on MTV in the U.S. at 12:01am on 1 August 1981; America had MTV on almost every channel whereas it was only a select few who had the channel in the UK. This meant that MTV depended on Americans to produce more music videos because when they started out they only had 200 clips and their office was in a hotel room; this was a risk that they made as they hoped that the channel would inspire new videos to be made to be shown on the channel creating a positive never ending circle.
New ideas kept appearing such as The Cure who used many new angles such as a camera coming towards them they they would catch, this intrigued their audiences however they revealed that in fact the camera was just in a shopping basket that kept getting swung around. Toni Basil was the first person who was a part of a music contract, so instead of just writing songs she had to come out with music videos also. She was told to make 7 videos and her first and most successful of those was "Mickey." Nick Rhodes became enamoured of the art world early in his career, making friends with Andy Warhol and The Factory crowd, and attending exhibitions worldwide. At the end of 1984, he released his own book of abstract art photographs called Interference. Many of the photos were displayed at an exhibition at the Hamilton Gallery in London and in 1985 the first CDs were sold in shops.
Phil Collins states that now "you have to look good before you sound good" and that angers him. Many artists were then trying so hard to look good; Bonnie Tyler almost collapsed in Total Eclipse because she worked so hard and Russell Kany made Duran Duran look good even though they had a traumatic experience when the windmill stopped and one band member was underwater for 45 seconds. Wild Boys had the most expensive video ever made (up to that time) but Michael Jackson's "Thriller" soon took over.
"Thriller" is said to now be the king all of music videos because of how much he changed, the concept was entirely his, he wanted to change into a monster inspired by the film "American Wolf, and in 1983 it became the bestselling album of all time with a budget of £500,000 and the video tripled the sales.
Iconic music videos include "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol, Marylyn Manson's self-assassination in one of his music videos, "Virgin" by Madonna, "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis Presley and "Thriller" by Michael Jackson.
We have to remember that MTV did not make the music video; instead they were the ones who just broadcasted it and made it more famous. In 1923 The Talkies released their first attempt at a music video, many people were opposed to the music video because they said that a film and music did not go well together and instead it just looked like a short film. And in fact this is exactly what the Beetles had aimed to do with their music video "Strawberry Fields."
In 1950 there was the First colour video and in 1955 James Dean, who was the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and remains the only actor to have had two posthumous acting nominations, killed in a car crash. The Top of The Pops was made in the late 60s by the BBC and all of this had already happened before the first ever heart transplant was carried out, in 1967.
In 1975 the first VCR was sold in shops and Queen also released their song "Bohemian Rhapsody." The whole music video was shot in 3 hours on a £3,500 budget with Bruce Gowers as the director. They didn't have the technology that we had today and used a kaleidoscope effect on the lens for some of the shots, making it hard to perform and re-inact the music video live yet the band were keen to make their album cover come to life. There are many inter textual reference to the Opera - Galileo and "lyrical references in this passage include Scaramouche, the fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro and Bismillah, as rival factions fight over the narrator's soul. Peraino calls the sequence both a "comic courtroom trial and a rite of passage ... one chorus prosecutes, another defends, while the hero presents himself as meek though wily." The song's introduction is recalled with the chromatic side-slipping on 'I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me.'" - Wikipedia.
In 1985 John Lennon was murdered and David Bowie released the song "Ashes to Ashes" with the Blitz kids, they also used a negative effect in filming and had a £5,000 budget. Duran Duran then released "Planet Earth" and critics explained that they didn't like musicians to play roles because they were not actors. We can see this in more recent music videos such as Robbie Williams' video "Millennium" was based on a James Bond theme; artists had now also started making cameo appearances in one another's music videos, Fatboy Slim is often known for doing this.
Mike Nesmith from the Monkies made MTV; in 1977 he split form the monkeys to make "Rio" but not only was he a part of music videos, he collected them. Mike wanted to make a channel where music videos were shown 24 hours a day but he got rejected from many places with their excuse being that it wasn't appropriate. He then took his idea the Warner Amerit where they had an empty broadcast satellite channel, so he made 'Pop Clips.' A Video Jockey (VJ) is an announcer who introduces and plays videos on commercial music television such as the United States, in this case MTV. The first global MTV broadcast was in 1985 where the advert of MTV going to the moon was included which is still used today. "Video killed the Radio Star" was the first music video shown on MTV in the U.S. at 12:01am on 1 August 1981; America had MTV on almost every channel whereas it was only a select few who had the channel in the UK. This meant that MTV depended on Americans to produce more music videos because when they started out they only had 200 clips and their office was in a hotel room; this was a risk that they made as they hoped that the channel would inspire new videos to be made to be shown on the channel creating a positive never ending circle.
New ideas kept appearing such as The Cure who used many new angles such as a camera coming towards them they they would catch, this intrigued their audiences however they revealed that in fact the camera was just in a shopping basket that kept getting swung around. Toni Basil was the first person who was a part of a music contract, so instead of just writing songs she had to come out with music videos also. She was told to make 7 videos and her first and most successful of those was "Mickey." Nick Rhodes became enamoured of the art world early in his career, making friends with Andy Warhol and The Factory crowd, and attending exhibitions worldwide. At the end of 1984, he released his own book of abstract art photographs called Interference. Many of the photos were displayed at an exhibition at the Hamilton Gallery in London and in 1985 the first CDs were sold in shops.
Phil Collins states that now "you have to look good before you sound good" and that angers him. Many artists were then trying so hard to look good; Bonnie Tyler almost collapsed in Total Eclipse because she worked so hard and Russell Kany made Duran Duran look good even though they had a traumatic experience when the windmill stopped and one band member was underwater for 45 seconds. Wild Boys had the most expensive video ever made (up to that time) but Michael Jackson's "Thriller" soon took over.
"Thriller" is said to now be the king all of music videos because of how much he changed, the concept was entirely his, he wanted to change into a monster inspired by the film "American Wolf, and in 1983 it became the bestselling album of all time with a budget of £500,000 and the video tripled the sales.
People were now going to much larger extremes than they ever had done before; Frankie Goes to Hollywood's debut single "Relax" was banned by the BBC in 1984 while at number six in the charts and subsequently topped the UK singles chart for five consecutive weeks, going on to enjoy prolonged chart success for the rest of that year and ultimately becoming the seventh best-selling UK single of all time (as of May 2006) even though it was never played on the radio. It wasn't shown because of the images of gay porn and the 'golden showers.' George Michael also released "I want your sex" which was also banned because it was too graphic and so was "Smack My Bitch Up" by The Prodigy. However not all stars made videos; Bruce Springsteen didn't make one for a while but when he did it was MASSIVE.
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