History of Music Videos

We began to look at the history of music videos and how they have developed over the years. We started by looking at Elvis Presley - Hound Dog(1956). In this music video we see Elvis the most and everything else is in shot for a combined total of about 20 seconds. The main focus is on him so that is why we see his whole body with his musicians in the background. After Elvis we looked at The Beatles - Hard Day Night(1964) where we see a complete change because this Beatles video shows a narrative film and shows abstract art. This the occurs more in the Strawberry Fields Forever video where an increase in art form is shown.

 

Now we move onto the Jackson 5 - Can You Feel It (1980) where the video has become animated and again has a narrative structure to it. I feel this is where videos start to become 'cheesy' and also a huge amount of special effects has been injected into the video now. We see the special effects coming into place again with David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes(1980) where we see the special effects and CGI focus on Bowie to represent his struggle in life.

A new type of video has now been discovered and produced by the king of pop. Michael Jackson - Beat It, Smooth Criminal and Billie Jean(1982-87) all have a narrative structure that leads into a full dance routine, Michael being at the front of them all for the main attention of course, but now with these videos we begin to watch the dancing rather than pay any attention to the song which is a breakthrough.

Moving on, we see Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer which is a very cleverly put together using a vast amount of photographs all put together in a slide show to create a video. Then we move away from everything completely and look at Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) which has gone back to the Elvis conventions of a performance with a high school crowd watching in a gym which was very grunge at the time to show that not all high school kids were the same.

After this we watched Beastie Boys - Sabotage which is essentially a parody video with the band pretending to be police officers in the 1980s, again with this video we pay no attention to the song whatsoever and just watch the video because it is compelling.A complete contrast of this is Take That (1992) where we see black and white colour mixed in with colour video. It is a video that is all about the appeal of women and gay men because of the partial nudity and the sexual caressing of their bodies.

Lastly we watch two Christina Aguilera videos, Beautiful and Dirrty where we see a huge contrast. In one video we're thinking of the sentimental value of the song and shots of her eyes, but in the next video we see her in very little clothing acting in a slut like way, contrasting her audience and also contradicting herself in a way from her previous video.