Notes on music videos

Music videos are marketing devices used by record companies, they aim to increase the record sales and the overall popularity of the song featured in the video.Music videos have been very popular since the 80's although they were made quite a while before this, The Beatles contributed a lot to the development of "The music video", most famously for their work in the film "hard day night". The film contains songs from the Beatles but also contains narrative making the film's content, musical sequences rather than music videos.In 1965 The Beatles began to made film inserts as a promotional tool, other bands soon followed suit but The Beatles led the way with "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", directed by Peter Goldman. These musical sequences were described as "Avant-garde" meaning experimental but sophisticated, this was achieved by the use of slow motion and other effects that hadn't been experimented with before this.In 1981 MTV was born are made music videos more commercial than ever, the first music video that aired on the channel was "video killed the radio star". Music videos became a standard practise for bands, as they could be cheaply produced using high - tech equipment such as the chroma key.