A music video is a short film that accompanies a piece of music or a 'song'. The modern music video is primarily used as a marketing device that promotes the sale of the single and other singles like it. These came in to prominence in the 1980's and were usually given the names 'illustrated songs', 'filmed insert', 'promo film' or 'film clip'. In China, music videos were called MTV's as the network was responsible for bringing them into the country.
Music videos use a range of styles and film making techniques such as animation, documentaries, live action and abstract film (non-narrative based videos). In most music videos there are a mixture of these techniques in order to produce a post-modern, interesting short film to promote a song. Most of the time the music video doesn't have anything at all to do with the song's lyrics and just makes for a visual with a separate meaning from the song; it's a whole different art-form in itself.
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| Jack Cole's Diamond's Are A Girl's Best Freind |
These were musical short films which featured bands, vocalists and dancers. An example of a music video series is Spooney Melodies. They typically had an animated background and a film of the performer singing.
Musical films were important leading up to the music video. Many music videos used the style of Musical Films to make successful videos. Examples including Madonna's Material Girl which was closely modelled on Jack Cole's staging of Diamond's Are A Girl's Best Friend.
Michael Jackson's videos show the influence of dance routines and sequences in Hollywood Musicals on music videos such as 'Thriller' and 'Bad' by Martin Scorsese, where it featured stylised dance 'fights' influenced by the musical 'West Side Story'.
1960-1967: Visual Innovation
In the late 50's the Scopitone (visual Jukebox) was introduced in France and short films were produced by may French artists to accompany their songs. It then started to spread across the Western world on similar machines like the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA. Soon, short films were made using music instead of dialogue and then began the pre-recording of songs and group lip-syncing.
The Beatles
"In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it was a loosely structured musical fantasia interspersing comedic and dialogue with musical sequences. The musical sequences furnished basic templates on which countless subsequent music videos were modeled. It was the direct model for the successful US TV series The Monkees (1966–1968) which similarly consisted of film segments that were created to accompany various Monkees songs."
Censorship:
"As the concept and medium of a music video is a form of artistic expression, artists have been on many occasions censored if their content is deemed offensive. What may be considered offensive will differ in countries due to censorship laws and local customs and ethics. In most cases, the record label will provide and distribute videos edited or provide both censored and uncensored videos for an artist. In some cases, it has been known for music videos to be banned in their entirety as they have been deemed far too offensive to be broadcast."
2010
Lady Gaga's Telephone video was banned by MTV. They claimed that the video's content can't be shown during their programming but was okay to show in their European programming with some censoring. Ciara's Ride video was accused by BET as being too sexually charged to be shown and subsequently UK channels also banned it from being shown.
