What is a Music Video?
Within Goodwin's definition of a music video, he says that its usually a 'short, moving image product, shot for the express purpose of accompanying a pre-existing music track and usually in order to encourage sales of the music in another format (CD). Nowadays there are many other different reason for the production of music videos .Such as, to construct an image to the said band or artist, or to not only advertise and give more exposure to the artist, it is know used within promotional videos. The creation and popularity of the music video has also meant that music has become visual ,thus creating the expansion for music channels that have become ever present within todays society.
Historical Overview
It is frequently misunderstood that that Queen's Bohemian Rhaspody ,was the first music video. Even though the music video made a substantial difference within the success of the track,it was the first music video or the arrival of MTV. The communion between film and music can be traced back to the 1920's within Oscar Fischinger's experiments within animation, where he produced a series of abstract studies that were synchronised to popular and classical music, for example seen within Komposition in Blau(1935), and also later within the famous Disney masterpiece Fantasia. From the success of the record label, Electrola, British filmmaker heard news of Fischinger's work, and decided to experiment for themselves, produced pieces such as Colourbox (1937).
Short films created to solely advertise singers and bands arrived fairly early days within sound filmmaking. The films commonly lasting up to 8 mintues and advertised artists from Billie Holiday to Bing Crosby, being shown as part of a newsreel and commonly the forerunner of the video jukebox, the Panarom( 1939-46).
The Paranom weighed a substantial 2 tonnes and contained a 20 inch screen where a reel of eight shorts, known as 'soundies'. Within these shorts, it showed a wide range of music, and in terms of imagery, seemed to be frequently more sexually daring and even politically at times as they were less likely to get censored. This technology died out quickly after the war. However, within the 1960’s the technology was resurrected in France with the Scopitone. This machine offered the shorts in colour and could play approximately 36 shorts. In contrast, the products seemed to be cheaply made ,consisting of mainly ‘song-and-dance’ numbers but still followed the trait of a high level of female display ,and now bright and vibrant colour also. The Scopitone was a success within France , and by mid 1965 there were over 1000 machine were installed in America.
US films were mainly produced by a company called Harman-ee ,on average taking $8000 to make. Within the films they used unnatural and unrealistic colours, indicating a artificial world. Carrying on the formula of sexual imagery , using a sexually suggestive dance routines ,using a close up shots of the female (covered) crotch.Overt sexual displays is used within music videos within the present, exemplified on MTV Base,
However, this also was short lived and failed to adapt with the changing times. Within the 1960’s the younger audience become attracted to rock music. Haram-ee began shooting bands such as Procul Harum, however these were more like the expection rather than the rule as most films were within the pop genre. Competition from television proved to great a competitor and the Scopitone soon died out. Prior the music video was the musical feature film itself. For example, the film The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland) produced promo clips which gained airplay. In America, AOR (Adult orientated Rock) was increasingly popular through radio and constantly making it harder for pop singles to break through and have some exposure.
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