Sergey Einstein, the Russian filmmaker, is considered to employ the new standards for the use of music in a film; his film Alexander Nevsky, 1938, is regarded as the first music video. However, we find the roots of modern music clips even earlier, in 1920s, when Oscar Fishinger supplied his animated films with orchestral scores by Alexander Scriabin. Afterwards, many filmmakers widely used melodies to accompany their films; these were the famous and well-known Max Fleischer, Walt Disney, the Warner Brothers and many others.
During the period of 1930-1940, numerous musicians appeared in short musical subjects, which were available in theaters. One-song films, produced in 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox, were called "Soundies". These were the ancestors of the contemporary song clips. Thousands of them appeared during that period and many of them are still accessible on compilation video tapes and DVDs.
The year of 1940 became prominent for Walt Disney's release of Fantasia, an animated film based on famous pieces of classical music.
With the appearance of television, music clips began to gain a fast development and wide popularity, presenting the performers of pop music as well as blues, jazz, country and rock. In the '60s the light show became popular for its live performances, where music was combined with abstract visuals.
The '60s were also the years when the music video gained the status of promotional video and began to be in use for domestic and international advertising goals. In 1964, the Beatles released their first song clip, A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lesler. The clip largely influenced a vast number of contemporary musicians, pop and rock group music clips. For the Beatles it turned out very comfortable to launch promotional music clips, since they were distributed for the international broadcast, as a result, in 1966, the Beatles stopped touring around the countries and had their promotional films tour instead of them. The Beatles improved the genre of music video to a great extent, using various techniques, such as dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, reversed film effects and rhythmic editing. In 1968, the animated film Yellow Submarine became an international sensation.
In the '70s the production of promotional films started spreading worldwide and the turning point to the eternal popularity and fame of music clips was the appearance of the US video channel MTV, starting a 24-hour-a-day music on television. Since then, it has become the "golden era" of not only the music clip release but also of the music clips competition, the best of which are honored at the annual MTV Video Music Awards.
The music clip became the creator of the performer's image and some of the singers are still famous not only for their ability to sing well, but also for their clips, which arouse a stunning image of its favorite in the mind of the audience.
It cannot be denied that the song clip is an excellent discovery as it is a carrier of our emotions. A well-planned music clip is able to make us laugh or burst into tears as there can be the whole movie of drama or comedy contained in a three-minute subject. It brings pleasure to view your favorite singer along the exotic or extravagant performance.
Channels, providing this type of entertainment, are all over the world and growing each day, the MTV channel was a pioneer, but many more are coming for our delight!!