History of a music video

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song, generally music videos link with the song they are for. Either by the lyrics of the song or the mood of the song. Most music videos show the band performing the song, not necessarily for the whole song but the band performing the track is mixed in with the narrative of the song. The song performance in a video takes up more time if the band is a new band, as they need to create awareness of their image and band identity. Music videos have been around for a long time, this came about in France in around the 1950's, this was all due to the invention of the Scopitine. A Scopitine was a visual jukebox. This quickly spread to other countries.




This breakthrough in tecchnology allowed not only France but many other countries to creat music videos of the same quality as the one above. Also this invention created knowledge for other countries to make their own versions of the Scopitine. For example Italy created the Cinebox and America invented the Color-Sonic.

One of the first pop performance clips was created in the 1960's by The Animals. Their song 'House of the Rising Sun' was filmed in high quality colour, and on a specially made set. The video was also a breakthrough as the lip movement of the lead singer was in sync with the track.

Promotional clips (or promos as they are known as more now) grew in importance from the 1960's to the 1970's, around that time they were known as 'song films' or 'filmed inserts'. A band that really set the tone of promotional clips, and were one of the first to use them was Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd are seen as pioneers of the music industry because of this.

Top of the Pops started to show music videos in the 1970's, however they were restricted to a certain amount of videos each programme, so it was in the best interests of artists to put a lot of effort into their music videos to gain more revenue. As this era saw the music video rise in importance.

1981 was an important year for the music video, as it was the year that the MTV channel was launched. This brought with it a new era in the music video, as they became more commercial and were used to promote the band and create revenue, by the mid eighties it was a very important part of music marketing. The MTV channel launched with 'The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star'.





As time and technology has progressed this has allowed for bands and unsigned artists to creat their own music videos that are very inexpensive but still are very effective. As unsigned bands can now make use of this technology and make a music video to raise awareness about themselves. Whereas before this would never of happened and smaller bands would find it hard to get more well known. The internet has enhanced this and has been very influencial on music videos and the importance of them.

Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;
• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package)