History of music videos

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. The term ‘music video’ first came into popular usage in the early 1980’s, prior to that time music videos were referred to as ‘filmed insert’, ‘promotional (promo) film’, ‘promotional (promo) clip’ or ‘film clip’. Although the origins of music videos go back much further than the 1980’s they officially came into their own when MTV based their format on the medium and then later with the launch of VH1. This is the reason why in Chinese entertainment, music videos were simply known as ‘MTV’S’ because the network was responsible for bringing music videos to popularity in that country, they are now known as MV’s in Chinese entertainment.

Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles together. Not many music videos do not interpret images from the song’s lyrics, making it less literal than expected.

In 1894 a promotion video was made for a song called ‘The little lost child’ by Marks and Joe Stern. They hired an electrician called George Thomas who then projected series of still images on a screen simultaneously which became a popular form of entertainment called the ‘Illustrated song’. Even today many music videos still use a series of still images accompanied by a song. The video 'The little lost child' is shown below.



However in 1975 the first ever proper music video was created. This was for the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen. This was the first video to not be still images projected onto a screen but people being filmed in action and was Synchronized to the music. Below is the video 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

Brief Specification

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;
• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).