By Natalia Dang

1. History of Music Video
By Natalia dang

2. Projections of images to music
The promoting innovation that made "The
Little Lost Child" significant to cultural history
was an idea in the mind of George H. Thomas
even earlier, in 1892. Stern which sold more
than two million copies of its sheet
music following its promotion as the first
ever illustrated song, an early precursor to
the music video.
George H. Thomas combined a series of
images (using a stereopticon) to show a
narrative while it was being sung. Lyrics
appeared toward the bottom of the images.
The first performance went poorly due to
upside-down images of inappropriate size and
placement, but these technical difficulties
were soon corrected. The illustrated song
technique proved so enduring it was still
being used to sell songs before movies and
during reel changes in movie theatres as
recently as 1937 when some colour
movies had already begun to appear.

3. Musical Films Developed as a Genre
The 1930s through the early
1950s are considered to be the
golden age of the musical film,
when the genre's popularity was
at its highest in the Western
world. Musical short films were
made by Lee de Forest in 1923-
24. Beginning in 1926,
thousands of Vitaphone shorts
were made, many featuring
bands, vocalists and dancers.
The earliest feature-length films
with synchronized sound had
only a soundtrack of music and
occasional sound effects that
played while the actors
portrayed their characters just
as they did in silent films:
without audible dialogue.
"Diamonds Are a Girl's
Best Friend" is a song
introduced by Carol
Channing in the
original Broadway produ
ction of Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes (1949),
which was written
by Jule Styne and Leo
Robin. It was based on a
novel by Anita Loos.

4. 1960’s Visual Innovation
• Short promo films with many advantages
• France- re-innovation of the Soundie, the
scopitone, gains limited success

5. 1970’
• Discovering TV shows as a great opportunity to promote
artists by record industries
• Producing short ‘Promos’- early music videos, which replaced
the live performances
• Top of the pops brought increased demand

6. 1980’
• David Bowie- Ashes to Ashes considered as a groundbreaking
video
• Music Video went mainstream
• MTV, the first satellite music channel
• Awards shows

7. Michael Jackson- Thriller
• was a short film released, which changed the
concept of music videos forever.
• The making of Thriller home video was also
released in 1984. It was the first ever video about
the making of music video.

8. 1990’
• Rise of the director
• An auteur’s medium- music video as art
• Nirvana-Smells like teen spirit- changed MTV
platform from glam rock to alternative rock

9. 2000’s - present
• MTV Hits in launched as MTV2 is gradually showing fewer music videos.
• Internet revolution
• Increase in YouTube/Twitter/Facebook makes quick and easy access to
music and music videos
• First playable videogame music video game by Norwegian band Rektor in
2006