music video

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music video
A music video (also video clip, promo) is a short film meant to present a visual representation of a popular music song. The TV station MTV ("Music Television" launched in 1981), originated the format of end-to-end music video programming without any conventional programs.

Alan Durant (1984, p.115) has criticized music videos tendency for glittery escapism, musical portraiture, which, "may fix currencies of sounds, but...may also close eyes to music seen more broadly as practice." (Middleton 1990, p.91)

History of music videos

Early Precedents

Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, which features extended scenes of battles choreographed to a score by Sergei Prokofiev, set new standards for the use of music in film and has been described by some as the first music video.

However, the roots of the music video can be found even earlier. In 1911 Alexander Scriabin wrote his symphony Prometheus -- Poem of Fire for orchestra and "light organ". And as far back as the 1920s, the animated films of Oskar Fischinger (aptly labeled "visual music") were supplied with orchestral scores.

The early animated efforts of Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films.

Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called Saint Louis Blues (1929) featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. It was shown in theaters until 1932.

Another early form of music video were one-song films called Soundies made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing. Thousands of Soundies were made, mostly of jazz musicians, but also torch singers, comedians, and dancers.

Before the Soundie, even dramatic movies typically had a musical interval, but the Soundie made the music the star and virtually all the name jazz performers appeared in Soundie shorts, many still available on compilation video tapes or DVDs.

The Panoram jukebox with eight three-minute Soundies were popular in taverns and night spots, but the fad faded during World War II.

In 1940, Walt Disney released Fantasia, an animated film based around famous pieces of classical music.

Television Era

The very first short musical films made specifically for television, however, were the Snader Telescriptions, more than 1000 short musical presentations filmed for use a television filler between 1950 and 1954. The Snader Telescriptions covered the entire musical landscape. Although most of them were of conventional pop performers, there were many rhythm and blues, jazz, and country music performers. Over the years, the Telescriptions have been re-released many times as compilations, such as Showtime at the Apollo.

In the 1960s, French technology developed for the aerial photography during the war was adapted to create the Scopitone, a modern visual jukebox. The Scopitone was a hit in France with fairly primitive scenes of bands playing, but when it was introduced into the US, the videos took on a vivid quality, with crooners wandering through crowds of girls in bikinis or "jungle" furs. The Scopitone also was a hit, but involvement of organized crime led to its demise, just as rock and roll was being revitalized, too late for Scopitone.

Also in the 60s, the light show became popular for live performances, combining music with abstract visuals, harkening back to Scriabin's efforts.

=== A Hard Day's Night, The Jean Genie and Bohemian Rhapsody ===

The modern music video has its roots in the early 1960s with The Beatles first major motion picture, ''A Hard Day's Night'' in 1964, which included musical segments that resemble today's music videos. That same year, the band began filming short promotional films for their songs which were then aired on television variety shows. By the time the band stopped touring in 1966, they used the promotional films to tour for them; when released in 1968, Yellow Submarine was an international sensation. Soon it was common place for artists to do this, and bands like The Byrds and The Beach Boys were also making promotional films.

The promotional clip continued to grow in importance, with television programs such as The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert mixing concert footage with clips incorporating camera tricks, special effects, and dramatizations of song lyrics.

The first promo clip that joined all the elements that today's video clips have is David Bowie's clip for the songs The Jean Genie, released as singles in 1972. In 1975 Queen released a video promo for "Bohemian Rhapsody" directed by Bruce Gowers, when they were unable to make a personal appearance on Top of the Pops. Considered a landmark in music video, it featured the complete visual grammar of today's music promos. Videos also found distribution through the early laserdisc format. Notable contributions came from deliberately avant-garde bands such as The_Residents and Devo.

Modern Era

The first music videos of the modern era were produced by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith who started making short musical films for Saturday Night Live in 1979. In 1981, he released Elephant Parts, the first video album and first winner of a Grammy for music video. A further experiment on NBC television called Television Parts was not successful, due to network meddling (notably an intrusive laugh track and corny gags).

During the 1980s promotional videos became pretty much de rigueur for most recording artists, a rise which was famously parodied by UK BBC television comedy program ''Not The Nine O'Clock News who produced a spoof music video; "Nice Video, Shame About The Song". MTV led the trend.

In the information technology era, they are now just as popular as songs themselves, being sold in collections on video tape and DVD. Enthusiasts of music videos sometimes watch them muted purely for their aesthetic value.

Internet
With the advent of easy distribution over the internet, a number of fan-created videos began appearing in the late 1990s and continuing into the next century. These are typically made by synchronizing existing footage from other sources with the song, often from television series or movies. Most commonly the source material is drawn from animated cartoons, especially anime (see anime music video'') but also including American animation series. Since neither the music nor the film footage is typically licensed, distributing these videos is usually copyright infringement on both counts. However, it is typically the owners of film footage who file lawsuits, particularly large American corporations who fear dilution of their characters (such as Charlie Brown) by such unlicensed videos.

Music video timeline

- 1941: A new invention hits clubs and bars in the USA: The Panoram Soundie is a jukebox that plays short videoclips along with the music.
- 1956: Hollywood discovers the genre of music-centered films. A wave of rock'n'roll films begins (Rock Around the Clock, ''Don't Knock the Rock, Shake, Rattle and Rock, Rock Pretty Baby, The Girl Can't Help It), and the famous Elvis Presley movies. Some of these films integrated musical performances into a story, others were simply revues.
- 1960: In France a re-invention of the Soundie, the Scopitone gains limited success.
- 1962: British Television invents a new form of music television. Shows like Top Of The Pops, Ready! Steady! Go! and Oh, Boy started as band vehicles and became huge hits.
- 1964: The US-Television market adapts the format. Hullabaloo is one of the first US shows of this kind, followed by Shindig! (NBC) and American Bandstand''.
- 1966: The first conceptual promos are aired, for the Beatles' 'Paperback Writer' and 'Rain.' Early in 1967, videos are released for 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' also by the Beatles.
- 1970: The record industry discovers these TV-Shows as a great opportunity to promote their artists. They focus on producing short "Promos", early music videos which started to replace the live performance of the artist on the TV-stage.
- 1975: "Bohemian Rhapsody" released by Queen.
- 1981: A spin-off company of the American Express Group starts MTV, an experimental satellite channel broadcasting 24 hours of music videos. The first video played was The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star". Today the start of MTV is commonly seen as the beginning of the "golden era" of music videos and an unparalleled success story of a new artform in popular culture, although many people see it as the death of the true artist, because now in order to be popular you must be physically appealing.
- 1996: Pop-up Video is first aired on VH1.

Music video stations

- Black Entertainment Television (BET), BET (USA)
- C4, (New Zealand)
- Channel V, Channel V (Australia)
- Channel V, Channel V (India)
- Channel V, Channel V (International)
- Hit Channel, Hit Channel (Italy)
- Juice TV, Juice TV (New Zealand)
- MCM, MCM (France)
- Melody Hits, Melody Hits (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine)
- MTV Asia, MTV (Asia)
- MTV Brazil, MTV (Brazil)
- MTV Canada, MTV (Canada)
- MTV China, MTV (China)
- MTV Europe, MTV (Europe)
- MTV France, MTV (France)
- MTV Germany, MTV (Germany)
- MTV Italy, MTV (Italy)
- MTV Japan, MTV (Japan)
- MTV Latin America, MTV (Latin America)
- MTV Russia, MTV (Russia)
- MTV UK, MTV (UK, Ireland)
- MTV USA, MTV (USA)
- MuchMoreMusic, MuchMoreMusic (Canada)
- MuchMusic, MuchMusic (Canada)
- Music Factory, Music Factory (Belgium)
- Music Factory, Music Factory (Holland)
- Music Max, Music Max (Australia)
- , MUSIC ON! TV (Japan)
- Musique Plus, Musique Plus (Canada)
- Sol Musica, Sol Musica (Spain)
- SPACE SHOWER TV, SPACE SHOWER TV (Japan)
- TMF, TMF (Netherland)
- TV K-LUMEA, K-LUMEA (Romania)
- VH-1, VH-1 (USA)
- VH-1 UK, VH-1 (UK)
- VIVA, VIVA (Germany)
- VIVA Italy, VIVA (Italy)
- ZTV, ZTV (Sweden)

External links and references

- Clipland A music video database covering nearly every promo made to date
- mvdbase similar service offering quite up to date material lately
- Launch Formerly independent but now Yahoo's outlet for streaming music videos
- Music on Television a brief history
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
-- Durant, Alan (1984).

See also: List of music videos

Category:Popular music
nl:Videoclip
de:Musikvideo
fr:Vidéo-clip
pl:Teledysk

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "music video".

video
Video is the technology of processing electronic signals representing moving pictures. A major application of video technology is television, but it is also widely used in engineering, scientific, manufacturing, and security applications. Other uses of video have tended to use the video formats designed for television use.

The word video comes from the Latin, "I see".

The term video is also used as abbreviation for videotape, as well as for video recorder and video player.

Analog video encoding formats
- NTSC
- PAL
- SECAM

Analog video electrical formats
- RF
- composite video
- component video
- S-Video
- RGB

Analog video tape formats
- Ampex
- VERA (BBC)
- U-matic (Sony)
- Betamax (Sony)
- Betacam
- Betacam SP
- VHS (JVC)
- S-VHS (JVC)
- VHS-C (JVC)
- Video 2000 (Philips)
- 8mm tape
- Hi8

Digital video tape formats
- D1 (Sony)
- D2 (Sony)
- D3
- D4
- D5
- Digital Betacam (Sony)
- Betacam IMX (Sony)
- DV
- MiniDV
- Digital8 (Sony)

Optical disc storage formats:
- DVD
- Laserdisc

Selected Digital video encoding formats:
- CCIR 601
- MPEG-2
- H.261
- H.263
- H.264


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