Brief history lesson on the origins of the music video; key moments.

1. Things you should have done/be
doing…
- Opened your A2 Media Studies blog
- Started your textual analysis of a ‘Pre-birth’
iconic music video of your own choice
applying Goodwin’s Conventions of Music
Videos
- Started to think about who you may work with
on this practice piece (this doesn’t have to be
the same people as AS or for Y13)

2. AIM: Understand the history of music videos, developments in
technology and changes in popular culture
Starter: Come up with a list of developments in
technology that have changed the way in which
music videos are produced and consumed.

3. Just over one hundred
years ago…music used to
be just a band performing
live to an audience.

4. • Invented gramophone
c1900
Thomas Alva
Edison

5. The Jazz Singer
1927
Half silent
movie; half
musical.
First talking
movie.
(4.15)
Mammy
TootToot
Tootsie

6. The Gold- diggers of 1933
• Elaborate production and choreography but recorded onto
film.
• Seeing big productions on a cinema screen for the first time.
• Depression-era - idealised glamour

7. Alexander Nevsky 1938 Sergei Eisenstein (Soviet Russia
propagandist film-maker)
Score composed by Sergei Prokofiev.
First time soundtrack specifically commissioned. First video that
set action to music (not just a live show)

8. Fred Astaire
-Big stage star but
was a bit old for the
arrival of film.
-Bringing musical
and big stars into
film.
Top Hat
1935

9. ‘Fantasia’ Disney (1940): arguably the first ‘music’ video.
Walt Disney was trying to get his audience interested in classical music
by making a cartoon to go specifically with the music.

10. Gene Kelly
Singin’ in the
Rain
Focus on
dramatic
context. Peak
of musical
films. Huge
stars out of
singers and
dancers.
(1952)

11. Leonard
Bernstein
(1961)
TV well
established.
Stage
musical
based on
‘Romeo and
Juliet’.
Musical into
film.
Officer
Krupke
Reflects other
societal changes
(the ‘zeitgeist’).
- Birth of rock and
roll
- The concept of
youth
culture/rebellion

12. Arthur Crudup
Explosion of Rock
and Roll, youth
culture and the idea
of the ‘teen’.
Young people could
identify with Presley
and a sense of it
belonging to them.
Able to make ‘black
music’ mainstream.

13. Ready Steady Go!
Live performances
in order to ‘sell the
band’ – usually
miming.
Dedicated
specifically to
music.
Record companies
started to see the
potential in the
commodification of
a band’s image for
TV.
As they were
miming it gave the
illusion of
performance.
It was broadcast from August 1963 until
December 1966. (ITV)
RSG! artists mimed to records but by late 1964
some performed live and the show switched to
all-live performances in April 1965.

14. (1964)
Very early
music video
Specifically
designed to sell
the band,
camera shots
used to focus
on the artist
and cultivate
image.

15. Your task: Significant Moments in
Music Video
To be completed over the next week and posted
on your blogs.
Map out a history of some of the significant
moments in the history of the music video.
Remember to add detail about why they were
significant. You may wish to use some of the
timeline tools below.

16. Predictions
How will music be produced and consumed in
ten years time?