Contemporary (1960-Now)

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. more...

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Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when MTV (Music Television)'s format was based around them.

Music videos are often called promo videos or simply promos, due to the fact that they are usually promotional devices. Sometimes, music videos are termed short-form music videos to distinguish them from full length movies pertaining to music. In the 1980s, the term "rock video" was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse.

Music videos can accommodate all styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action films, documentaries, and non-narrative, abstract film.

History of music videos

Early precedents

In 1910 Alexander Scriabin wrote his symphony Prometheus -- Poem of Fire for orchestra and "light organ". And as far back as the 1920s, the animated films of Oskar Fischinger (aptly labelled "visual music") were supplied with orchestral scores. Fischinger also made short animated films to advertise Electrola Records' new releases, making these films possibly the first music videos.

In 1929 the Russian film revolutionary Dziga Vertov made a 40 minute film called Man with the Movie Camera. It was an experiment on filming real, actual events, contrary to Georges Méliès theatrical approach. The film is entirely backed by music (played live by an orchestra on theaters) and has no dialogue at all. It's notable for the use of fast editing and fast frame frequencies, which were all synched to the music in order to create an emotion on the viewer. The film is highly regarded for setting the principles of the documentary genre, but it is also important in all filmmaking.

Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, which features extended scenes of battles choreographed to a score by Sergei Prokofiev, was influenced by Vertov's work and it set new standards for the use of music in film and has been described as the first music video.

Animation pioneer Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball". Early 1930s entries in the series featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons.

The early animated efforts of Walt Disney, his Silly Symphonies, were built around music. The Warner Brothers cartoons, even today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were initially fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Brothers musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were also distributed to theatres.

Read more at Wikipedia.org