Music Video History

Soundies

Fat Waller. Had this music on Soundies.

Soundies is the original way to display musical performances, created in the early 1940's in New York. Soundies was a coin operated juke box which ran in various bars and nightclubs where music has always been popular. The moving visuals were displayed on a panaram which only showed black and white. There were various different types of genres, which allowed for future music artists to be categorised. This was very important for African-America music artists as they had little chance of performing in public places, so the invention of Soundies gave them a chance for their music to be heard on a machine. Some of these artists include Lena Horne, Fats Waller and Dorothy Dandridge (mainly Jazz). Soundies was the first form of bringing the audio from music and the visual from films together. It was the start of the music video. Although the videos were short (only 3 minutes long on average), this has influenced the timing of music videos and still to this day have about the same duration.

Scopitones

Around the 1960s, the French version of the juke box. Unlike soundies, scopitones were in full colour. They were vital to the development of the modern music video today. Popular English songs were sung by unknown artists which made people feel more inclined to find out who these uncommon artists were. This in turn, contributed towards the popularity and exposure of unknown music talents. The biggest musical stars of the 1960s weren't usually displayed on the scopitone.With 36 different titles, scopitones are thought to have been the ancestor of a modern day music video. Clearly the development of these juke boxes were extremely important to the music industry and the artists that were struggling to break into it. However, by the end of the 1960s the scopitone had vanished but the concept remained.


Experimental Film

Experimental film is a type of cinema that was founded in the twenties in Europe. It is an artistic practise that is not commonly used, consisting of very avant-garde way of filming and editing. Although it may only have a small number of practitioners and usually directs away from mainstream types of cinema, it still has a very influential effect on commercial media, visual effects, editing and cinematography. And even though experimental film is not widely practised by professional film makers, this form of cinema has been used alongside strong topics such as gay rights, politics and also feminist arguments. Because experimental film is so different and quirky, it catches the audiences attention and makes them question what they see. This concept has then been taken on for music videos, with artists and music video directors creating extreme, avant-garde videos to get attention and express themselves in a different and unusual style. There is a use of abstract techniques used within this style such as rapid editing and out of focus images.