History of the music video- part 2

In 1964 pioneering pop artist The Beatles released their feature film and loosely structured musical ‘A Hard Day's Night’ which was to lay a formula for many more successful pop music vidoes.

The Beatles' second film Help! In 1965 followed the same format but was more lavish as their fame and success grew and filmed in colour in London other international locations. In 1965 The Beatles stopped making films and instead just making promotional clips as a promotional tool to accompany record releases. As their image developed through to 1996 so did their promotional videos and they began to produce highly sophisticated work. Their final video Let It Be was made of studio clips straight from Abbey Road. This showed how the image of The Beatles was enough to produce a successful music video and very few artists can use this same simple format successfully.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9SgDoypXcI

The Beatles videos are recognisable by their use of hand-held camera work, rhythmic editing, slow motion shots and reversed film. The style and distribution of their videos were the first of their kind
Initially the first music videos were made in the UK and were popular with artist such as Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones. These were used for when the band was on tour and could not make a TV performance, the video was screened instead.
In 1966 The Kinks released ‘Dead End Street’ and their promotional video was one of the first music videos to have a plot with the band running around London streets as undertakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0WPC-N3UYE

This is a very popular format and many of today’s music videos have a plot to correspond with the lyrics and tell a story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNZM-BJN9SI

In 1967 Procol Harum’s hit ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ approached a more serious style of music video, there are two music videos for the song one has the band members walking among ruins, with documentary style footage playing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7azB3yVc8U

As music videos were developing other countries, particularly New Zealand & Australia, began to produce more local music and by 1967 bands were creating early music videos for their songs. One of the first was in 1967 from The Masters Apprentices for their single ‘Buried And Dead’. This used fantasy sequences and live studio/concert footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?=v7fzpfmXYdNQ

In the 1960s and 70s pop music fashion was constantly evolving as technology evolved and bands preferred performing in TV shows.
As TV carried on advancing and distribution became wider the promotional clip became more important and were aired on programs such as The Midnight Special
The style and technical side of the videos also evolved as music videos became an art form as well as a lucrative marketing tool. More camera tricks, special effects, and dramatizations of song lyrics were introduces and directors began to specialise in promotional videos.
Popular artist such as David Bowie, Pink Floyd and ABBA all used music films promote their music internationally raising the profile of promotional videos.