History of the media

1926–1959: Talkies, soundies, and shorts

In 1926 with the arrival of talking pictures or 'Talkies' many musical films were produced and they featured popular artists and bands of the time. An animation artist called Max Fleischer introduced screen songs, which were a series of short cartoons with a bouncing ball bouncing over the words to a song so that the audience could sing along in time with the song this is similar to the modern day karaoke machine. In the early 30's cartoons usually featured popular musicians in their own short live action sequences where they would promote their songs. In 1940 to 1947 there was a phase called 'soundies' these were musical films that usually included dance routines to them, similar to music videos now.

1950s: Early music clips

Tony Bennett states in his autobiography that he had created the first music video when he was filmed in Hyde Park walking along the serpentine which was later used as a video for his song Stranger in paradise. In 1957 Elvis Presley's song jailhouse rock became the second music video. The first abstract music video is seen to be 'Daime si do bytu' or Lets get to the apartment which was created in 1958 and directed by Ladislav Rychman. 

Bob Dylan

In 1966 Dylan released a monochrome video clip for the song Subterranean Homesick Blues which was filked by D. A. Pennebaker and was featured in his documentary of Dylan called 'Dont look back' which was avoiding any attempt to show performance or a narrative, the video focuses on Dylan who s stood in the back of a darke alleyway and is silently shuffling large cue cards which had the key lyrics to the song. Many of the main artists at the time created short videos so they could be played if they were un able to appear on live television. 

The Beatles

In 1965 The Beatles had reached worldwide fame and they could no appear on all of the shows which they would have liked too or had been invited too.they also found that when appearing on these shows became to repetitive and that interrupted with the freedom and creativity which they enjoyed so much with studio recordings.


In November 1965 they produced a series of short films to promote themselves and they sent them out to all of the television shows which they could not make it too. these films where made with a sense of humor and fun so they could show their fans what they are really like.



In 1966 The Beatles made additional promotional films for songs such as paperback writer and the less popular 'Rain' they were both filmed in colour and in black and white, as america had been using colour T.V. since the 50's and European countries were still in the very early stages, for instance Britain's first colour broadcast came in 1967



in 1967 The Beatles filmed promo films for two songs and for the first time both films had no performance of the song and just used the feel of the song to storyboard the action. The Beatles made a small album for T.V. called the Magical Mystery Tour, and was regarded as the closest thing to a feature length music video, it combined the loose plotting of their films and the randomness of their promos, it was broadcast on boxing day 1967 and was heavily criticized by many people and critics.

Queen

The Music video is considered to have been born on top of the pops in 1975 when Queen where unavailable to appear on on the show because they were on tour so they filmed a music video for the programme to show.

MTV

MTV was launched on august 1st 1981 The channel is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, and is owned by Viacom Inc. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos, these were guided by people known as video jokey's or (VJ's). They would record intro's and outro's to every musc video These intros and outros would appear to air "live" and debut across the MTV program schedule 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though they were pre-taped within a regular work week at MTV's studios.